Today is Not That Day

That uncomfortable place between lanes

It's where the magic happens... between lanes in master's swim. We only have 3 lanes: slow, medium and fast. The slow lane (where I've been for the past month as I rehabbed my shoulder) is for newbies. Avg pace is probably 2:15. The intermediate lane is a pretty big step up: I'd guess avg pace is under 1:50. And the speed demon lane is more like 1:30.

Tonight I told my swim coach that I'd held 1:55 in my swim test last week. He smiled and pointed me to the intermediate lane. (gulp.) 1:55 was not fast enough to hold off getting lapped. I definitely didn't do as much yardage; some sets I had to lop off the last 50 entirely. Once I lopped off 100. But dang it, I gave it my best shot. It felt like the swim test all over again, but a lot longer.

Ooh, this place is tough. I feel bad for the speedy ones when I feel their hands at my feet and I have to pull over at the wall to let them pass. So I push harder. I managed to hold 1:55 for the entire swim. Once I pulled out a 1:46 on a fast 100 towards the end. Just. Keep. Up.

And this is how we get faster. Good stuff.

Testing, testing: swim & run

So with the first training block under my belt to work up a bit of fitness, it's now testing time for all three sports to set benchmarks and HR zones. Or as Molly fondly calls it, "lessons in suffering." Oh yes. But fun, too. I'm discovering that I can hold faster paces than I'd thought.

Swim test

First up: the swim test on Wednesday. I've been out of the pool for 6 months with a bum shoulder, but it's amazing what 3 weeks of steady pool work can do. My secretly optimistic goal for 10x100 (with :10 rest) was to stay under 2:00/100, but realistically I figured my pace would drop off and I'd end up more like 2:05. The first two were @ 1:50, and then 3 - 8 I pretty much nailed at 1:55. 9 and 10 dropped pace oh so slightly... the last one I was giving it my all and just barely kissed 1:57 so I have some endurance work to do. But averaging 1:55/100 on my first test made me super happy. I'm not too far off from last year (already) and am now optimistic that I'll be able to get below 1:45 by the end of the season. 

BTW: I'd watched this video a couple weeks ago and am found that these tips on "shrugging and falling" made a noticeable improvement in my swim times. My masters coach said I'm doing a better job now keeping my arms moving and eliminating dead spots.

Run test

Then today I ran my first-ever 5k. I was originally planning do the run test alone but (after attempting to start yesterday with too high a heart rate) I figured it would be great to postpone a day, hydrate like heck, and retry today in race mode. I signed up yesterday afternoon, and ventured forth this morning with slight trepidation after getting this email from coach: "Remember, if it hurts YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT.  It should hurt like heck.  Do not be afraid of it.  Let it be ugly out there!!!" Umm... I've never done that for longer than 1 - 2 min at a time, but ok... game on! 

It was a very small race, maybe 30 - 40 runners, and held at Crissy Field. I didn't bring my camera so I'll borrow a shot off the internet. Gorgeous place to run, and nice & flat!

Needless to say it was not this sunny at the crack'o dawn. I'm sure the race director dictated a memo to self: "for optimal turn-out, don't choose daylight savings day next year."

Anyway... I had absolutely no idea what pace I could hold for 3 miles. I'd never done this before, and my training runs have been @ 10:00 - 10:30 for the past year or so with minimal speedwork. I figured I'd just go by feel and maybe end up (if I'm really lucky) just under 9:00/mi avg.

I just focused on form, keeping pelvis in alignment, slight forward lean, proper arm swing, fast turnover. Felt hard but doable. Looked down at my Garmin and I was hauling at 7:45. Geez, I can't sustain this. I backed off ever so slightly, kept focus on form... but completed that first mile at 7:46 avg. While it felt sustainable despite the tight chest and slight wheezing, I slowed in mile 2 to 8:05... but whenever I noticed my pace slipping (a few times it dropped to 8:18) I just went back to form: "come on Jen, pick up that turnover, slight lean..." and my pace would automatically pick back up without a lot more effort. Good lesson that form is almost as important in running as it is in swimming. I also learned that pursing my lips helped oxygen intake and wheezing, although I'm sure I looked kinda funny.

Then the psych: I thought I saw the finish line in the distance... orange cones and a time clock. Huh? Oh, we must be finishing at a different place than we started. Ok Jen, it's time to pull out all the stops. GO GO GO!! Picked back up to 7:45 and ran until just before the orange cones, when I saw a small sign with an arrow: "5K this way". Holy sh_tballs, that is all shades of wrong. I had to slow down a bit to regroup, then it was back on until the finish, maybe another .3 miles. Finished up at 24:23, with an 8:01 average pace. SUPER HAPPY. I had no idea I could do that!

So now I have my zones for training and a great benchmark to beat. Bike test is scheduled for next week, so the sufferfest continues. I love tests. Of course given my profession (I do a lot of market research) it makes sense that I'm keen on measuring progress based on data. Can't wait to add power... I decided to hold off until Garmin's Vector comes on the market this summer. If I'm going to splurge on power measurement it might as well be the latest technology. 

Hope everyone's have a great weekend!

A comedy of errors: Catfish Crawl 1.2 mi swim

Yesterday was the 1.2 mile Catfish Crawl open water swim down in South Bay. A gorgeous sunny day with perfect upper-60's water temp. A great opportunity to get another 70.3 swim distance in and work out the kinks before Miami. I love making mistakes in practice races like these... infinitely better than on race day! 

The first error: This was my very first time to forget my swim goggles. Seriously, I am going to an open water swim and I forget my goggles. You know when you hear the announcer occasionally saying, "attention everyone, we have an athlete in need... if anyone has an extra pair of goggles could you bring them up to the front?" And you're thinking, what a dumb-ass to forget her goggles. Yep, I was that athlete, hanging my head in shame. Never again. 

I was hoping to see some friends finish their 2.4 mi swim (they started 2 hours earlier than me), so I was lollygagging around the start. I met Mary Tanner (who rocked the 2.4 and then got back in for the 1.2!), watched a couple of my tri club pals finish, and then Molly emerged from the lake with a big PR! It's so fun to finally meet blogger buddies in person. 

(if you read Molly's blog you've already seen this pic; I'd wanted to include Mary but alas, she had already dashed off, remarkably full of energy after swimming almost 4 miles!)

Which led to my next error: Apparently I was more interested in meeting blogger friends than racing, because I got into the lake to warm up and realized 5 minutes before start that I'd forgot my timing chip. WTF?? I never do stuff like this. Bolted out of the water, ran up to my bag, grabbed my chip, put it on the ankle, jumped back in the water and had a 1-minute warm-up before the start. Thankfully it was a small race; I could never have pulled that off at the tris I've done. 

I had a couple goals for this swim; speed was not one of them. I'm quite sure I'm not in any better swim shape than I was at Honu -- where I logged a glacier-like :51 swim time -- so today was all about 4 things:

1: The swim start. Grade: A

As a middle of the pack swimmer, I need to get comfortable starting in the middle of the pack. That's what I did yesterday -- middle on the left -- and managed to hang with everyone without getting kicked or feeling claustrophobic or panicky. Folks were pretty congenial which helped. 

2. Drafting. B-

I've never actually tried to draft in a race, so today I wanted to find some feet. I found myself swimming at the same pace as another woman, but every time I hung on she would slow down or do a breaststroke kick. I'm not entirely sure how she knew I was back there -- I never touched her -- but clearly she didn't want me tagging along. Fine then. So I give myself an A for effort and for realizing that swimming in someone else's bubbles wasn't scary and totally doable; I won't get kicked in the face. Points off for totally forgetting to find more feet... I did find a pair once more, and kept losing them because I was swimming off track and they weren't. So maybe that's more of a sighting issue than drafting... which brings me to...

3. Sighting. Grade: D

Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad. When I know where I'm going, I'm pretty good at swimming in a straight line. On the outbound stretch you can see that I'm totally on the straight and narrow... we were swimming away from the sun and I could see the buoys. On the return... well, see for yourself:

 

Red line is from my Garmin, blue line was the actual straight line between buoys. I never saw that third red buoy... I was sighting from the second red buoy out to the yellow one in the distance. You can see I was roughly on pace for that one, but I was swimming in light chop into the sun and it was really hard to see, hence the slight zigzag. I realized when I passed a woman on a paddleboard with her back to me that something might be off... since I was thinking more about my form (goal #4) than drafting (#2) I didn't realize that I was VERY far from the pack and sighting against the wrong target. Ha. Ok, hard right turn over to that red buoy (that thankfully I hadn't passed yet) and back on track to the yellow buoy.  

I felt pretty bad for the poor girls drafting off of me :-) They learned a good lesson from me: sight for yourself and don't depend on others! 

4: Form: Grade: B

I discovered in the pool earlier this week that I go faster when I pull/push through the ENTIRE stroke instead of just focusing on front quadrant. Lots going on here... I'm still training my body to do the "over the barrel" early vertical forearm, and now I also need to concentrate on what's happening when my other hand moves out of my sight. It's all well and good to practice this in a pool when I'm not also worried about sighting and drafting... quite another during an open water race. Part of what took me so off course is that I felt myself slowing down, and it occurred to me that I should really focus on my stroke finish so I could keep up my pace. So my head was down, and I just stopped paying attention to where I was going or who was around me. So... this one's tough to grade. When I paid attention to form, I swam well. But I also swam off course. And when I focused on other stuff -- sighting, drafting -- I wasn't paying any attention to how I was swimming. 

So I suppose I could give myself A's in all of these goals independently; what tripped me up was trying to combine them. Holding good form while knowing where I'm going and staying in the pack... a lot of balls to juggle. It will just take practice! I'm always a tiny bit astonished when I meet someone who only trains for races in a pool; it's such a different world when you're out in a lake or the ocean with other people and no lane lines. Once I get my form down in the pool it will be one less thing to remember, but still... 

Regardless, I emerged from the water in 42 minutes, which is 9 minutes sooner than Honu. What really slowed me down at Honu was wearing a 2 piece that let water fill up my shorts -- it was like a parachute! And of course I'm faster in a wetsuit. But Miami will likely not be wetsuit-legal so I still have more work to do. Would like to get sub-40 sans wetsuit for Miami. 

Overall a good swim day with good lessons learned. Finished the afternoon with a 50-mile bike ride which was actually a lousy ride. Not because of the course (thanks Molly for mapping it out!) but I was cranky, tired, and wanting to get off my bike. I suspect it was the heat -- mid-80s, when I'm accustomed to riding in mid-6os! -- no additional electrolytes, and probably insufficient calories. Also... for some reason new routes seem interminably long! I can do 55 on a regular route with no problem, but give me a new 50 mile route and I'm thinking, geez, when is this ride going to END??? Ha. Does this happen to anyone else? 

Ok, one more ride and run to finish out this rather big bike-focus week. Just realized I've already done 100 miles on the bike (20 more than my biggest week this year), which could account for why I was tired yesterday and wanted to Get. Off. This. (*&(*&#@. Bike. Now. by mile 45. Ha. (ya think??) 

Who pees in the pool??

As a newbie on Daily Mile, I'll sometimes click around to find interesting people to connect with. One of my random clicks took me to a guy named Jason, who wrote about his swim today:

Ok if you bothered to read this far I have true Gomer confessions *head down in shame* I (full name here) peed in the pool, I just could not help it I really tried but it must be my triathlon training to pee when ever you can. I greatly apologize to my fellow swimmers and will punish myself appropriately.

Nooooo!!! I did not want to read that. Yes, I've peed in my wetsuit in open water. That's different. We're talking a pool, people. A relatively small, confined area in which to swim. I get water in my mouth when I swim and then spit it out. Yes, I feel a little guilty about spitting in the pool, but it's pretty much just pool water. And now knowing definitively that grownups pee in the lap pool, and that small amounts of pee is likely going into my mouth, is just a little much.

True confession time: who of you has actually peed in the pool? Is this something that happens all the time and I've just been naive and oblivious? Or is this guy an inconsiderate jackass? I vote for the latter.

What a difference a year makes...

Wildflower official race photos are here, and I have to show you a funny before/after comparison. Guess which one was my first OWS? 

 

When I got out of the water last year, struggling to maintain an upright posture, I see the photographer with a little smirk on his face. He pulls the camera up -- click -- and then decides to tell me, "you have a stick on your head." Uh... thanks dude.

This picture never fails to crack me up.

My first master's swim

The idea of going to a master's swim has always brought up a tinge of fear. I just started swimming last year and I always had this impression of master's swims as, well, where the "real" swimmers hang out. Where they would give the newbie triathlon dorky chick (that would be me) the evil eye for invading their space and slowing things down. I felt like an outsider. And when you feel like an outsider it's just easier to do your own thing.

But I knew it was time to suck it up and try it out. I worked hard in the pool all last month and to my dismay, I didn't get any faster. We worked mainly on strength, rotation, reach... but my lack of speed increase really bummed me out. Coach suggested it was probably a form issue, which I sorta blew off. I mean, my stroke isn't THAT bad. Right? (This seems akin to everyone thinking they're really good drivers.)

So tonight I ventured out to the pool and chatted with the swim coach. I told him I'm a newbie, and I told him (rather worriedly) my times for 100 and 400 to see if I could hang with everyone; he kinda laughed, saying I'd be fine. I asked him to please give any advice he could on my stroke, and then dropped down into the slow lane. I apologized in advance to some of the gals in the lane, saying it was my first time at master's and I hoped I wouldn't slow them down. 

I needn't have worried.

Turns out I was the fastest person in the lane, along with one guy was probably about the same speed. And then there was the guy who always wanted to go first but he was undoubtedly the slowest one. The coach was great about giving advice: my arms were kicking out wide before initiating the pull, I had a hiccup halfway through my pull, elbows needed more bend, kick needed to be tighter. Lots to think about!

I could tell right away that correcting my pull -- keeping my arm from going wide, and keeping arms constantly in motion without stops & starts -- made an *immediate* improvement in my times. I easily dropped 5 seconds off my avg 100 time, and by the end I popped out a jaw-dropping (to me) :40 50 yd sprint. Holy cow. I've never done that. And by the end of the session I was consistently leading the lane.

Can I just say how excited I am, and that I now love swimming?? Ha. I feel soooo much better that all of the swim time last month wasn't for naught... we were building up my engine and I just needed to get my wheels on straight. Now that I have someone on deck giving real-time feedback on my stroke, all that strength work and time in the pool is totally paying off. I felt strong tonight... this was definitely a confidence-building swim. And it makes such a difference actually swimming with other people... it's a lot more fun than staring at a black line all by myself, and it keeps me on my toes. I can't slack when I'm sharing a lane with 4 - 5 other swimmers.

We'll see how many more times I'll swim in the slow lane before the coach bumps me up to the big-girl lane. I'm sorta intimidated by them... the "real" swimmers do flip turns! One more thing to add to the "learn" list. At least I'm finally starting to get the hang of bilateral breathing.

Happy training!

 

 

Party in the pool

Thanks to mom Santa, my pool companion arrived a couple days ago. I now can swim with Aretha, The Prodigy, Florence + The Machine and other favs.

This baby is a 100% waterproof iPod Shuffle that you can clip right onto your googles. 5 stars. I paired it with the Aquapac 100% waterproof headphones, and I must agree with the other reviewers on Amazon: the sound is great, but they do fall out of your ears unless you use your swim cap to keep them in. In other words, fantastic for swimming but a real pain for anything else. Yesterday when I grabbed this instead of my usual iPod/earbuds for an hour on the trainer, these earbuds fell out every 30 sec. Not too bad in the beginning (or I would have switched it out) but the more I sweat, the more they slipped.

Anyway, this came a couple days ago so I tried it first while water running on Thursday. Wow, music really made it fun and the time flew. I will say that water running is under-rated. Especially with fast-as-you-can intervals. My legs hurt the next day on the bike! Looking forward to having music on my "real" swim today.

First week of training

So I'm halfway finished with my first week of training. And it's my first week of training with a coach. Unfortunately I'm being a terribly high-maintenance athlete because we're trying to work through what I can and can't do yet given an injury, plus I'm getting a remedial grade on knowing how to read my swim workouts. Last year was my first year swimming, and all I did was swim back and forth. Boring! Now I get to decipher the use of all these fun pool toys and secret swimming code words. Sometimes quite unsuccessfully, but I'm getting there.

Which reminds me of a very funny comment that Jeff left on Jason's post about how to tell someone's a triathlete when they're in the pool:

Here are how I tell if someone is a triathlete at the pool: Multiple tan lines, numerous swim toys (pull buoy, fins, kick board), mp3 strapped to Aqua Sphere googles, wearing jammers, not doing flip turns, wearing swim cap with a Tri name on it, some type of s/b/r tat, smell like chlorine before you get in the pool, swimming 2:30/100, a Total Immersion book at end of lane, grease on right calf, dirt underneath finger nails, drove to gym in a hybrid hatch back with a 70.3 bumper sticker, a bike bottle at end of lane for hydration ... or (drum beat) the number one reason someone knew you were a Triathlete? You told them (-:

What really made me laugh is that I just ordered a waterproof MP3 player. And I do bring one bike bottle for hydration. And I have the Total Immersion book (and video) although I don't bring it to the pool. Too funny.

On a positive note, I am on the road to health. I went to a PT on Monday who determined that I've been a biomechanical disaster waiting to happen, and that if I don't hurry up and realign myself, I'll get the same injury on my right leg. So it's all about the glute medius right now to get my knees and ankles in alignment. If you're interested, check out this excellent article on the role of the glute med in running and how to diagnose and correct a glute med weakness.

I also discovered that while I was all proud of myself over the past few months for getting up to fairly high reps of a couple glute med exercises, I've been doing them wrong. No wonder I ended up injured. So today I went to the gym with PT exercises in hand and struggled to get through all of them correctly. It hurt so good.

And the best news: my hamstring is almost entirely healed and I could do an exercise pain-free today that I couldn't do at all last week. I suspect this could be due to the bodywork and acupuncture I got yesterday.  So now I'm primarily just dealing with piriformis pain... but I think I've figured out how to banish this pain for good. I decided to cut out the one thing that aggrevates it the most: sitting. Yep, I was bed-ridden all day with my computer on my lap. Thank goodness I work for myself. I think I sat for a grand total of 15 - 20 minutes all day, and that was just for meals. And although I woke up with big-time piraformis pain, it had almost vanished by the time I got back from the gym tonight. I think after a few more days of bed rest, ice, stretching, and foam roller, I'll be good to go.

And meanwhile, I'm back to pool running tomorrow. It's actually kind of fun.

Swimming with a HR monitor?!

As I mentioned last week, I haven't wanted to swim lately... I've lost swim fitness and I've been struggling. And when I compete with myself (ie. with my expectations of what I *should* be able to do) one of me always loses. Funny how that works.

So today I remembered how much I loved "running just to run" once I set aside my pace expectations and just enjoyed the act of running. Likewise, it makes sense that I would enjoy swimming more if I stopped putting a bunch of pressure on myself to perform at a higher level than I'm at right now. Keith reminded me that this should be fun... right? If I don't get on track with enjoying the process, it's going to be a looooong 5 months of HIM training!

So I figured if I had such a good run when I just focus on heart rate versus pace, I should do the same in the pool. Chill out, stop pushing so hard, and just enjoy being in the water. Keeping my HR down in the pool is hard for me for some reason. So I strapped on my HR monitor in the dressing room and jumped in the pool.

After my warm-up I wanted to see where my HR was at, so I checked the Garmin (yes, I do have the waterproof 310XT) and the HR tracking wasn't working. Doh! It has electronics in there, right? At this point I'm sure that I completely destroyed my *brand new* HR monitor that I just bought to replace the one I somehow lost in my apartment. Geez. Just because the 310XT is waterproof doesn't mean the HR monitor is.

So I take it off, wad it up next to my water bottle at the side of the pool and keep swimming. All the while, hoping no one notices a sopping wet HR monitor by the pool. Talking to myself about what a dumbass move that was. Wondering if I should share on my blog because it is pretty funny in an embarrassing way. Feeling like EVERYONE must be staring at me (it's all about me, right?) because clearly I didn't get the memo that people don't wear HR monitors in the pool.

Ok, I was wrong, but in the moment I just didn't know. I'm new to all this!

So when I'm out of the pool and dried off, I try it on just to make sure I really did destroy it. Wow, it still works!! So in case you were ever wondering whether you could use your HR monitor in the pool the answer is... it depends. I did a little research when I got home. You probably won't damage the monitor (although it depends on what kind you have), but the signal just doesn't transmit to a Garmin watch in the water. That said, it looks like Polar had some models you could use in the pool, and there's one by Finis. Seems odd given that the 310XT is waterproof, but oh well.

At least I had a semi-enjoyable swim, when I wasn't worrying about whether I broke the stupid monitor.

I don't wanna.

Uh oh. I'm in a "I hate swimming" mode. I'll eagerly do anything else... run (even though my hamstring's still healing), bike (tomorrow I'll be back on for the first time in a month!), weights (today) and yoga (today.) But I don't wanna swim.

Isn't funny how our minds can just throw up a wall about something? I'd actually planned to swim today; brought my bag to the gym and... whaddya know, I forgot my goggles. I was SO happy. Took a pilates/yoga fusion class (awesome, exactly what I needed), did some weights and just enjoyed myself.

I'm disappointed because I'd actually started really enjoying swimming towards the end of the tri season. But I let it go just a bit too long in the last couple months and now I just suck in the pool. Rationally I know it won't take long to get back into swim shape, but my inner 5 year old has dug in her heels. She says it's wet, boring, lonely and sucky.

Ok fine. I'm humoring her little tantrum this week because I KNOW coach is going to have me in the pool PLENTY come January 2. Next week I'll give the master's class a try. I'm so not ready for that, but it's the only way it's gonna happen. I need other people to train with.

Do you have an inner 5 year old? What does he/she complain about? Curious minds want to know.