In case it isn't screamingly obvious based on the few posts I have managed to get up lately (and the fact that almost none of them have much to do with actual training), I am WOE.FULL.Y out of shape.
It's been (O.M.G.) two years since I was training religiously, and it shows. In my weight. My attitude. The way my clothes fit. My inability to carry a 25 pound sleeping toddler up a flight of steps without getting winded.
Seeing as how I'm theoretically doing a sprint in... um, about 10 weeks... I have resolved to do better. So after dropping Bear for his afternoon at daycare, instead of coming home to work on trying to get clients who can't afford to hire me I went to swim.
Which, if I'm doing the math right on this, hasn't happened in abooooout... 11 months. Yup. That sounds right. I remember I got in that one good swim last May, 6 weeks before missing that tri in June to the plantar fasciitis.
Even though my times were - by any real standard - atrocious, they were actually leetle bit better than I anticipated. I remember being mortified after that last swim that my lap times per 100 yds averaged out close to 4 minutes. (I KNOW! *shudder*)
Today I felt pretty good in the water. Clumsy, sure, but better than I feared.
During my 32 laps (~1000 yds) I thought a lot about...
- keeping my body aligned properly
- kicking
- not lifting my head so far when I breathe
- my angle of attack on the pull
- continuing my pull all the way down to my hip
- rotating
- gliding between strokes
I even managed to do a few of these things right for a moment or two. And I pushed about as hard as I could without going anaerobic.
With all that, I am only slightly less mortified to report that my paced averaged about 3:30/100yds. *headdesk*
The good news is that, even with this snail's pace, at least I can finish the swim leg of that sprint in about the same time I did this race last time. Ya know, the one when I was pregnant and required to go really slow.
I am now officially on a quest to rediscover my cardiovascular fitness. For starters, methinks I should probably continue searching at the bottom of the pool.
4 comments:
Are you doing the Naperville tri? I'm already signed up and excited to go.
We'll have to get together again.
Take care,
Melissa
You'll find that cardio, never fear. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming....
My last swim was... uh.... last September. Oh have mercy. I'm a leetle afraid to get on my bike for fear I'll flatten it. Yup. It's that bad. I'm hoping today the Bean and I can walk to the park. That's all the closer I'm going to get to cardio for now. I wish you lived closer to me.
Little by little, darl. You WILL get there.
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