Better late than never

I had been writing my post on the train but never having time to post it. So here is part of my catch up post.

I’m going to go back to the weekend. I never did get a race report up. I just wanted to mention a couple things about the 5K for future reference.
1) I had set 2 alarms. 6AM & 7AM. Of course I turned off the 6AM alarm and got up at 7. Unfortunately, that meant I had less of a clue as to what I wanted to eat before this race. At 6 I could have eaten just about anything and not worry about it. At 7 I decided to eat some oatmeal. It was probably too much oatmeal…. Doesn’t matter, I think the mistake was not waking up at 6.
2) I need to think about how far and how fast I need to run before a race. I can see how it would be good to have a pre-race warm-up planned ahead of time.
3) That night I decided to try out the icy/hot. Just to see if it helps out at all. It’s hard to gauge it’s effectiveness. I had no trouble running the next day tho’.


Saturday afternoon, Genine and I met Maija and Paul at the pool. We put some good distance in 5x200, 10x100, 20x50. Well I got to 15 of the 20 before my lower abs and my calves let me know that was enough for the day. Genine was swimming shorter distances but kept with us. It was a good workout for her as well.

Then we went out to dinner with Maija and made plans for Sunday.

Kryste and Ian stopped up to visit on Sunday. So we shifted our morning trail run to late morning so that they could go to Jockey Hollow as with us.
Genine took Maija’s dog Cooper and went off with Kryste and Ian. Kryste had the “kid carrier backpack”. She joked that I could take Ian with me on the run and it would simulate my running 2 years ago. (Ian weighs 40 pounds, the backpack a few more I suppose). As you can imagine Kryste’s shoulders got a good workout. As Ian yelled "Go Coopy Go" from the backpack.
Maija and I ran with Frito. I slipped on the rocks and leaves early in the run. Fortunately I landed it well, just a bit of a cut on my arm and a sore hip the next day. It was cold and windy at the tops of the hills but a very nice day to be out running.
We added some extra distance this week. My watch measured 6.4 miles.

In the afternoon, Genine and Kryste made up a batch of split pea soup from a recipe given to my by a co-worker a few days ago. I met Maija at the pool and joined in on her IM workout. (less the fly strokes). My arms and shoulders were feeling pretty beat up from all the swimming this past week. It was good to go and get a shorter/varied swim in to loosen everything up.
The soup was fantastic. Thanks Jamie B! I’ll include the recipe at the bottom.

Monday: Masters Swimming at 8:15PM. It would seem that it only took one session for our coach to realize that the easiest way to help us improve, is to teach us how to kick. I shouldn’t say that we are all poor kickers but most of us need all the help we can get. So we did a ton of kicking. Freestyle and Fly. We did Vertical kicking. We worked on Fly with our fins on… It was tough. I was impressed that our coach didn’t fall over laughing watching us try to do some of this stuff. It’s too bad the session isn’t on video. It would have been funny to watch a year from now when we are all good at this. (At least I hope I will be good at it by then)

Tuesday: 2nd Lesson with my swim coach. Started off with Freestyle. I guess the major fix has been corrected because we ended up working on a ton of other stuff. Oddly enough, one was my open turn at the wall. I know I give up a ton of time at the wall, it just hadn’t mattered much to me. He went through the whole thing, explaining, demonstrating, it looks simple enough. The trouble is I’ve done it my way so long, anything different is going to take practice. We spent quite a bit of time on it and I don’t think my last try was much better than my first. I felt very learning impaired for the rest of the session.
Fortunately, we moved onto the Total Immersion drills. At least I have done these on my own and it was familiar. The TI drills seem quite basic and I’m sure many people would say they are useless. My opinion of them before class tonight was that they were helpful. Now that I’ve been coached through the drills, I can see what a great coaching/learning method the system is. Having the coach make adjustments/corrections as I was doing the drills took these drills to a whole new level.
Then we moved back to my freestyle. My right hand exit before recovery is good. The left hand is awful. My arm recovery is causing rotation/balance issues as well. Again, now that I’m aware and I understand it. My brain is working overtime to try and break the old habit. Yet as I finished a lap, I’d ask is that closer? His response was “um no, it’s exactly the same”. I’m not surprised making changes can be tough. It’s going to take time and focus.
I mentioned to him that we had worked on Fly the night before at masters. So he asked me to swim 25 Fly so he could see it. So I did my 25 Flounder down the pool and then he shows me what the stroke/pull/recovery should be. Then he shows me what I’m actually doing. Then he tells me if I continue to do it the wrong way I’m going to cause myself some serious shoulder damage. UGH!

Vegetarian Split Pea Soup:
3 cups dry split peas
7 cups water
1 bay leaf
2 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
2 cups diced onion
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 stalks of celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 potato, thinly sliced
ground pepper to taste
4 tbsp red wine vinegar to taste
place split peas, water, bay leaf, salt and dry mustard in kettle. Bring to boil, lower heat, simmer, partly covered, 20 minutes
Add onion, garlic, celery, carrots and potato, simmer partly covered 40 minutes. stir occasionally.
add black pepper and vinegar to taste
serves 6
per serving: calories 370, total fat 3g, saturated fat 0g, fiber 23g, sodium 420 mg, cholesterol 0 mg, carbohydrate 67g