Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Look Ma, no arms!

I really wasn't sure how the swim would go this morning. My shoulders were still feeling a bit creaky, so I started easy. And what do you know? My arms went around no problems. In a few lengths I got into the groove, relaxed, and enjoyed the swim.

The catch was going very well, and the timing was good. Just as I began to slow down just the tiniest bit, my next stroke would start. Smooth. I'd watched the video of that guy with the really really smooth stroke, and I was pretending there was a camera above me filming. Suddenly I realized I was swimming with my core and back muscles, not my arms. All my arm muscles were doing is triggering the catch, and going around nice and easy. My breathing was good and even, no gasping. I'm tempted to go on about how this felt, and some of the tiny technical details I was thinking about, sort of, but I want to go to sleep now, and I don't want to put you to sleep.

Of course, all good things come to an end. I could feel my catch starting to get jerky so I worked on that, and decided to look at the clock minutes, rather than seconds. I was astonished to discover I'd been at it for 1800m without really thinking about it. I finished up the 2 K in a couple seconds over 39 minutes.

Then some dolphin kick, a bit of pull, some backstroke as cool down and my hour was up. The interesting part about sitting in the hot tub was listening to a guy whine and snivel about most of the pool being taken up for a class for those stand up paddle thingies. Even from the hot tub the other pool looked pretty calm and when I looked a few minutes later there were only 2 people in the whole pool. Even the two 50 m lanes he could have joined, there was only 3 or 4 people. He could have joined them. Jerk. Some people.

A bit later I got onto the bike not sure how that was going to go either. Within a few minutes I knew I was going to have a good spin session. My legs were liking going around and around. After a short warmup I found myself at endurance pace, and stayed there an hour.
Then a half hour at tempo, which didn't feel as hard as it did the other day.
Then back to endurance for 10 minutes.
Then a 20 minute time trial, trying to maintain 210 watts, and did it! Yay! When I got the trainer that effort level would have knackered me in a few minutes, and I could have gone on a bit longer, I think. However, I also know that this really is getting up to my max effort level for now.
Easy for 10 minutes, then 5 at endurance, 5 at tempo, and then 10 easy spin and cool down for 2.5 hours altogether.
I felt great!

Yoga class, it's like FF could read my mind. Everything was good. Worked what needed to be worked. Not too hard, not too easy. I was feeling the flow, which doesn't happen often.

Even on top of that there was other good stuff. All in all, a really good day.

2 comments:

  1. Isn't it funny how sometimes when you feel tired/out of sorts, you actually put out a good session? Way to go on your biking prowess Keith!!! YAY!

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  2. Today was another example where I was thinking I was tired. And it was going to rain soon. And it was kind of cold. But after some warm up basement tidying and cleaning, I was ready to go and had a great run. I think it's becoming my new motto "just go unless you really can't. really!"

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