Matt's week so far.

Monday: Masters Swimming in the evening. I felt that I had really good balance tonight and got through the sets without feeling like I was falling apart. Even the shark fin drill I felt like I was much improved.

Tuesday: This is supposed to be my full day off for recovery. Because I'm not sure what this weekend is going to be, I decided to do 1:20:00 on the bike trainer in the evening. There were times were I felt I lost focus and my cadence dropped 10rpm. Then I would have a hard time getting back up to speed. Often I would feel like I have no form at all and was just struggling. All of my training has been done with the extra weight on the fly wheel which is supposed to help replicate a long flat ride. I haven’t compared what the feel of these workouts would be if I removed that weight. Maybe I’ll do that Thursday night.

Wednesday: Morning swim with Genine. I must not have eaten enough to recover from last night’s bike because I had nothing. It was the exact opposite of Monday’s swim.

Evening yoga with Tiffany and Genine. I really look forward to this every week, which is funny considering the fact it’s not easy for me at all. I guess it's because I'm learning so many things that are going to help me balance out my strength, and the stretching should help keep the injuries down. Then of course there’s the fact I always feel great when I finish.
A few key things I learned this week.
I learned how to hold Genine’s foot the right way while stretching her out.
While doing one of boat poses (forget which, half boat?), we’ve determined my glutes are not in balance with my hip flexors in terms of strength. This would be a good explanation of why after long runs I have hip flexor issues. I need to work on strengthening my glutes and think about how they are involved in my running (currently, probably not very much). I also should be thinking more about my core while running. Keeping the belly button pushed back, holding a strong core. Planks and side planks will be a huge help in building stability through the core.
She also brought out the foam roller and showed us how to use that to work out the adhesions in our calves, IT Band, hamstrings…

Thursday: Morning swim w/ Maija. Left shoulder is a bit sore. I’m guessing this is because I probably tried to power through my bad swim Wednesday morning…
A good part of Maija’s swim workouts are strength focus. So there is a bunch of pull buoy in the workout. Which would be make for an easy workout for me and Maija knows this. So she says that I should probably be doing kick sets rather than pull. She’s right but I know I’d never make it through 1000m of kicking. Heck 100m of kicking and I’m not a happy guy. So I decide to alternate 100s. Pull/Kick. I got through 500 I think before I had to warm down and catch my train.

That’s where I am now. Sitting on the train typing up this post. My left shoulder is still reminding me that it’s a chronic problem for me. I didn’t mention this before. Sunday while Genine was at Trapeze, Hal, one of the instructors was asking why I wasn’t up there. I explained that my major concern is my left shoulder. It’s flakey enough that I feel that I could seriously injure it. He immediately asked if I had a shoulder horn (which I don’t). He explained that this is something I should seriously consider adding into my training. So of course I looked it up online when I got home. I also found links to ways to perform the exercise without the “horn”. I’m still considering buying this thing. I know from yoga that I’m not the best at holding good form while doing any kind of exercise and these rotator muscles aren’t very forgiving when it comes to poor form. It would definitely be nice to have the stronger shoulders.
Then there is the glues issue, Genine says we should just add those exercises in with the 50 days of abs workout. So that’s what’s going to happen.

Looking to bike tonight, not sure what Friday morning yet. We will likely be on the road Friday night to NH to visit Eric. I’ll probably do some running up there. It’s kind of nice to run in a new area for a change. You know, you have the excitement of an unknown dog charging off the porch and you have to wait and see whether there is an invisible fence or not. Or you have to hope you remember your course and how to get back. Mostly it’s just nice to be on a different course for the variation of terrain.
Of course Genine suggested we take out bikes and we could go ride the Mooseman course this weekend. Her argument was that it’s not likely to be any colder than it was last year when we rode it in April and it was snowing on us at times. (good point). I do have a nicer bike jacket now too. Hmmmm…..