I emailed coach last week, whining *again*, about my swimming. I was really feeling like I'm stuck in a rut, even after the lesson. And the more I thought about my swim stroke, the more confused I got. Am I supposed to do the stuff I learned at the lesson (more of a lengthening out my stroke) to get faster? Am I supposed to increase my arm turnover to get faster? Kick more? Kick less? Turn more on my side? Or less? So, yes, completely reasonable *now* to see that I was way over thinking it. She sent me some comments, and no it wasn't "quit yer whining!", and so I'm back to working on things without thinking about it quite so much. If that makes sense. So tonight I was swimming on my own, since I couldn't make masters swim. I really focused on the drills. Work on one thing at a time. And when the time comes to swim....just swim. And maybe I saw a little progress. Which completely fell apart as I got tired. But still...I have to start somewhere.
I had a nice moment of progress last Saturday on my brick workout too. Legs felt the best they've felt off the bike in I can't remember how long. I was actually running....off the bike....unheard of. And I was instructed to end in HR zone 3, so I saw some paces I haven't seen....well....I think ever. So I'm feeling good about getting a tiny bit of speed in my aging body. It's nice to see the results of the work.
Sunday was a rest day. What better day for a hike, eh? Okay, that might not be rest, but it was a nice easy-paced hike with Jo Lynn and dogs. The three B dogs: Bam, Boomer, and Bella. Lots of babbling brooks and streams. Lots of cows. Interesting too that Bam is perfectly content to *chase* the cows when she's in a pack. Probably doesn't hurt that Boomer and Bella can run circles around her and the cows are mostly scattered by the time Bam gets there, but still. The dogs had a blast, I had fun chatting it up with Jo Lynn, and Bam and I both had a nice nap when we got home.
My weight had a nice little blip downward this week. Seems to be a pattern, lose one week, hold steady for one week. Whatever. I'll take it. I'm about 1.5 pounds from my original arbitrary goal weight. I'm going to go for a dunk test sometime in the next few weeks so I'll have a better idea what my body fat is and can set a goal body fat and weight from there. Hopefully my lean mass hasn't dropped much, if at all, and I've mostly lost fat. I have to guess there's at least some muscle loss however. Those 3, 4, 5...8! hour rides from last year *had* to have put some muscle on my legs. And now that I'm doing shorter durations, I'm pretty sure some of that has melted away. Be interesting to see anyway.
In other news, I hear from my big brother that he's back in training. He and my Aunt are going to run the Illinois marathon (the half). It's on May 1, so there's plenty of training time yet. Very cool. If I wasn't already going to be back in Illinois two weekends in May, I *might* be tempted to join them. Then again...this is the year of shorter stuff....so maybe not tempted *too* much. Happy training family, you'll do awesome!
