Tag Archive for swim

…I'm swimming in the rain

September 16, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Usually they leave the outdoor pool open in inclment weather as long as there is no lightening. Today, it was closed and what is funny is that when I went to swim it was raining steady and when I left it had stopped. Now, 2 hours later, the sun is out and the streets are pretty much dry. Well, we needed the rain, so it was an okay deal. The yard was looking brown…

So swimming was indoors today, which isn't really a bad deal. The water feels slightly more chemicalized than the outdoor pool. I took tuesday's goggle lesson and had no trouble keeping the pool from entering my goggles. I ended swimming a mile today without much fanfare. I took a less than two minute break at the halfway point, but other than that the laps were continuous. I was having a fun time with my form. I found that I can't have good form with my arms AND kick at the same time. I can do one or the other, but continuous kicking is something I will have to learn. So this is what happened:

Split Split Distance Split Time
1 800 meters 18:23
2 800 meters 18:11

The weekend should be low-key on athletics. Our friends who have twins will be having their 5th birthday. So that is during the day and then at night is the Tennessee/Florida game, so that is a much watch (8:00pm CBS – GO VOLS). Sunday… will probably be everything we need to have done on Saturday but skipped it!

Life In General ,

Equipment Malfunction

September 13, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Seems that I needed a primer on how to operate the water glasses today. My goodness! I could not get my goggles to repel water to save my life. I'd be half way in a length and my goggles would be half full… then finishing up the lap, I would have to stop to clear out the water and readjust them. I did this for 6 laps until I stopped, took them off and inspected the goggles. Well, who knew it would help if the goggles were equally tightened on both sides? I mean, no wonder my right goggle leaked faster, it was looser. Who Knew?

Well, with the goggles on tight and relatively leak proof, I continued on for a day of swimming. I had originally wanted to do 1600 meters, but only did 20 laps or 914 meters. It seemed that I was in a beta fish mode today and wanted to race the swimmers in either lane. Sucks that I am slow because I wasted too much energy trying to “win the race”, didn't help about my goggles either!

Tomorrow looks like I will make it a 5 miler. One of our aunt's from Jen's side of the family is coming to help out around the house until mid-October. I am very excited because this will take some stress off Jen with the kids and working and for me, it may give me the extra freedom that I need to get some more running in, at least a little more mileage during the week.

Life In General ,

A good swim

September 9, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Today was an excellent swim, probably the best swim that I have had in a great while. I opted out of going to lunch with the guys from work, since it was a short week, I wanted to get the extra workout. So, I made it to the pool with the intent of completing 27 laps or approximately 1200 meters. The UT staff had put the configuration back to the width configuration of 25 yards, but that was okay.

I wasn't exactly sure how long I was going to swim before I took a break either 400 meters or 800 meters. I felt strong for the swim and decided to go 800 meters before I took a break. I probably could have gone the entire 1200 meters, before I needed a break and that is encouraging for triathlon swims. My break was less than a minute before I started the final 400 meters.

I really tried to work on my form today during swimming. Just about every aspect of my form could be changed or at least tweaked. But until a professional swimmer/triathlete watches me, I'll keep trying on my own. The two main things that I worked on today was my breathing and kicking. My breathing is very inconsistent, at the start of a swim, I can get my head out of the water and breathe easy. However, the more I swim, the more fatigued I get and don't get my head out as far. This leads to swallowing some water as I swim. I found a technique that worked while I was concentrating which consisted of not cosing my mouth at all, but as soon as my head goes underwater, I start the exhale process. This keeps the water from entering my mouth. Of course, this works great in a controlled pool lap session. Stick it out on a choppy water/ocean add a few people and see how I fare then.

My current technique consists of kicking every other stroke. Why? I don't know, but that is what I do. If I could have a consistent kick, it would propel me faster and thus relieve some of the work that my arms have to do. I am most scared that my legs muscles will cramp and/or pull while trying to kick for a long period of time. I guess stretching and becoming more flexible would relieve stress during the kick.

Here are the time splits for my swim:

Split Split Distance Split Time
1 800 meters 17:02
2 400 meters 9:55

On a side note, my feet feel fine from yesterday and probably could have ran today if I chose. I doubt that I will run this weekend as I will give blood on Sunday. However, there is a slight chance for some miles on Saturday… we'll see.

Life In General

Beautiful weather

September 7, 2005 planet3rry No comments

it's in the low 60s at night and mid 80s during the day, what better conditions could you ask for when working out. My goodness!

Today was a swim day. A short swim day at that, I only went 800 meters. I was very happy that they had the pool in the 50 meter configuration which is the Olympic Standard. One it is easier to calculate mileage in your head and Two, you don't have to change directions (something I am bad at) as frequent. So, I ended up doing 16 laps for 800 meters for the day since I didn't think that I would have the stamina to swim much further after a 10 day or so hiatus from swimming. I wasn't too far off. I probably could have done another 200 meters without any problem, but I swam pretty hard the first 400 meters and was tired for the 400. I was able to complete the last 50 meters in 1:04, which would give me a 8:32 Trideltathon 400 meter time. My best time is a 9:23 back in 2002, so to cut off a minute would be excellent.

My legs were a little sore from yesterday's run but not in a bad way. I'll be running again tomorrow but not sure if I am going to run 4 or 5 yet. 5 is awfully nice if I could pull that off during the week.

Life In General ,

M-T

August 23, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Monday and today (Tuesday) workouts:
Monday
A run day, a short one at that. I planned to only go 3 miles since I wasn't sure if the heat was going to get to me. It was hot but not very sunny, so I didn't want to get out to 2 mile turn around and be dead. So, I made it to 1.5 and turned back. It was a very successful run especially after the Scholar's Run. I was able to keep my pace up really well and only stopped at the halfway point to rehydrate. So in essence, I did the total 3 miles without walking. That is right, I made it up the Lake Loudon hill without stopping and in good time too. Here are my splits:

Split Split Distance Overall Distance Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace
1 1.0 1.0 7:39 7:39 7:39 7:39
2 0.5 1.5 3:58 7:56 11:37 7:45
3 0.5 2.0 4:07 8:14 15:44 7:52
4 1.0 3.0 8:10 8:10 23:54 7:58

Tuesday
In the pool, 1097 meters… I did 822 of them freestyle and then for 6 laps I tried the backstroke, worked on breast stroke and see how far I could go under water. I should have ran today, because it was nice and cloudy and fair cool (around 80 degrees). The humidity wasn't as bad either.

Life In General ,

A Fish Named Terry

August 19, 2005 planet3rry No comments

I had a good time at the pool today. I did a semi-time trial for the 800 meter distance, in that I went as fast as I could while doing the entire 800 meters (actually 822) and I took split times at every 6 laps or 137 meters. The splits are as follows:

Meter Split Split Time Overall Time
137 2:36 2:36
274 2:49 5:25
411 2:50 8:15
548 2:52 11:07
685 2:57 14:04
822 2:58 17:02

How does this compare? Well, if I regress back to 800 meters from this workout, I get a time of 16:34 for 800 meters. My best recorded times, which are essentially my best times for triathlon swim are:
800 meters in 2002 at 21:27
400 meters in 2002 at 09:23, but would be a 18:46 if I doubled it

Tomorrow is the Scholar's Run 5k I'll let you know how it turned out!

Life In General

Another Hot One

August 17, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Today was another hot one and I coerced one of my Stat Buddies, David to run with me today in the high heat. I was hoping that the clouds would have stayed around, but they left the area from 11-2 today, leaving the running path nice and hot. This was David's first time in the heat of day and I wasn't exactly sure if he'd make it, I probably bugged him with all my “Feeling, okay” questions. But as someone who has experienced Heat Exhaustion before, I know that it sneaks up on you and you can be prone to Heat Stroke, which is something you do NOT want to have. The plan was to go out and at least do 3 and at the 1.5 mile marker, see how we feel and decide whether to turn around or do 4. We decided to try 4 but we only did 3.

You can see by our split times, that we ran very consistently for the first 3 miles. But then we walked to conserve energy for the Lake Loudon Hill (see monday's post). But we never ran again and took a different path to get back to the TRECS building to avoid the big hill. Here are the splits:

Split Mileage Overall Mileage Split Time Split Pace Overall Time Overall Pace
1 1.0 1.0 8:05 8:05 8:05 8:05
2 0.5 1.5 4:08 8:16 12:13 8:09
3 0.5 2.0 4:09 8:18 16:22 8:11
4 0.5 2.5 4:07 8:14 20:30 8:12
5 0.5 3.0 4:16 8:32 24:46 8:16
6 0.95 3.95 14:18 15:00 39:05 9:54

I didn't post on Tuesday's swim… I went 1000 meters, but then got a Charlie Horse in my left calf and so I called it a day. No problems with the calf today.

I will not be exercising tomorrow for 2 reasons: 1) the UT system is shutdown for training for the Fall semester and 2) I'll be in court as a witness and do not know how long I will be gone.

Life In General , ,

Sunbathing and Laps

August 12, 2005 planet3rry No comments

It was busy at the pool today. When I got there, all the lanes were full. So, I lounged around and sunbathed for about 10 minutes while I waited for a lane to open up. I had already decided tat I would be swimming 800 meters today, so time really wasn't a factor today.

Nothing exciting to report about my laps… I went 868 meters just as planned. I even had time to lay out a little more before showering.

I am going to try to run Saturday Morning. I do have some yardwork to do as we prep the yard for a fence. I think that I could get in 4-5 miles without a problem. I'll have to look up the weather… and it looks about the same as is it today. So, I am off to plot a route…

Life In General

Water Wednesday

August 3, 2005 planet3rry No comments

I was excited to see that the swimming lanes were in the 50m configuration, this allows for less counting of laps and so it is easier to keep track of distance swam. I had bought some new goggles to replace the ones that were lost and then found. I scored a great deal at Wal-mart, they were $7 on clearance. I think I will have to go back to see if there are more left.

I ended up getting in 1200 meters today in roughly 30 or so minutes. There was one lap that everything was clicking, breathing, stroke and I was gliding in the water. If I had more time, I might have gone on for a little longer but I didn't want to wear myself out. After all, we have two bundles of energy at home!

Knoxville Marathon training will officially start on November 1st of this year. I will create my formal training schedule after I read the magazine article that Ray sent me (I did get it!). I am looking forward to NOT getting sick this year and having a great marathon. More to come on that in the next few weeks.

Next Race on the schedule is the Scholar's Run to be ran on August 20th. It is a challenging 5k with some “hills” on the course. I have a personal affection for this race, as it was my first 5k PR back in 1998 where I finished 5th in my age group. The next year, it was another PR (22:07) and I knocked off one minute from my personal course record. I have had decent showing at this race since then, mostly I use it as a gage for my fall speedwork, to see how slow I became after the summer months. It is part of the Ruby Tuesday's Triple Crown and makes me eligible for the triple crown prizes in December, also a nice incentive.

Prediction for this race is still in question… I would like to have a time less than 24:48 (8:00 min pace) but would really be happy with anything less than a 7:54 pace or a 24:30 time.

Life In General , ,

A tale of two runs

July 20, 2005 planet3rry No comments

July won't be a big goosed for running. It won't a big month for running either. I don't think historically that July is a very big month for mileage. Anyway, I got back out on the road again after my epiphany from the last post. I mapped out a 3.4 out and back route for yesterday's jaunt. I can't say that it was the best route, I saw lots of turtles, but other than that it wasn't that great. Let me show you my split times:

Split Mileage Time Pace
1 1.7 12:45 7:30
2 1.7 17:25 10:15
Total 3.4 30:10 8:53

You can easily see that I took off way too fast. Also, the sunscreen I used was getting into my eyes which burned, so it was a little hard to see. Ironically, the burning sensation went away if I ran a fast pace… go figure. I swam 1371 meters today in the pool but will be going out on the road tomorrow. My legs are sore from Tuesday though, so we will see. I think that I will find a 3 mile course as well until I can get my pace up.

Life In General ,
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »