Lesson Taught But Not Learned

22 Days

Last Week's Totals (Rest week)
Swim: 3400 yards
Bike: 139.9 miles
Run: 20 miles

I've always been one of those people that has never had to watch what they eat. The only way that I do watch what I eat is as the food enters my mouth, from there it was of no regard to me whatsoever. I've never weighed over 140 lbs. and even before training couldn't gain weight if I tried (which I did). I don't say this to brag but to point out in this post that this "blessing" is not as much of a blessing as you might think it is.

Since I started training and racing triathlons a few years ago I've lived by the adage: "If the furnace is hot enough it will burn anything", meaning that if you're working out and training then your body will use whatever fuel you provide it. I still believe that this is true to a point but have learned many times that doesn't mean your body will burn the fuel efficiently.

In my last post I said that I had a back up plan for my botched weekend long ride. That plan was to call in "sick" to work (with my bosses permission) on Wednesday and head up to Muenster (1 hour drive NW) for 115 miles of hills. Muenster is a great place to get a long ride, hilly in. Each April this German town hosts a road rally in conjunction with their German festival. So you go out and ride, then come back and eat your weight in bratwurst. That's my idea of a perfect weekend. Unfortunately it had been a number of weeks since I had been out there and they've been doing some road construction so the roads were so rough that they actually unscrewed my bottle cages and then proceeded to tighten them again.

115 miles is a tough distance both mentally and physically, especially when you're out there all alone. Heading north with the wind was so very nice. I ended up averaging 19.7 mph for the first 25 miles. But then I had to turn south for the long 25 mile journey into the wind. This is when my head started to mess with me and doubt started leaking in. It was understandable to start getting tired fighting the wind for over an hour and a half but I was more tired than I should have been and my motivation and confidence were fading. It wasn't until mile 75 that I started to realized what was going on. Again.

What clicked in my mind around mile 75 was what I ate for dinner the night before. I went over to Jonathan and Milina's house for dinner to watch the MMA fights and play with the kids, this used to be a weekly occurrence before Ironman training started. The standard dinner all the years that we've been doing this is homemade pizza but this time Milina also made fried pickles (I love fried pickles). This pre-ride dinner was definitely not sufficient for the next days training ride and I started to bonk around mile 85 and knew that I didn't have 30 more quality miles left in me. I even ended up calling Kati at one point for a little encouragement, that's when you know things are going down hill (I wished that I was going down hill). In the end I decided to cut my losses and call the ride done at 103 miles. 12 more miles might not seems like that much further to go but when your head is in a bad place 12 miles is an eternity away - that and I still had to go for a short run, which went surprisingly well considering how the ride went.

Since that ride I have been thinking a lot more about nutrition, what I eat and what I should be eating in order to fuel myself and perform the way that I want to and know I can. My coach read somewhere that a person doing 15 hour training weeks (this week will be somewhere around 17 hours) needs to be taking in 9 grams of carbs per kilogram of weight. That means that I need to get about 573 grams of carbs per day, that's almost 2,300 calories in carbs alone. That's the average, moderately active 30 year old's entire daily allotment of calories just in carbs. I can't imagine that I was getting this and even if I was they weren't good carbs.

So since that fateful day on the bike I have been really watching what I eat. Eating whole grain breads, whole grain brown rice, quinoa, fruits and vegetables with lunch and dinner, less Dr. Pepper and less refined or processed foods. I have found that this new diet is quite a bit more expensive though - why is it so cheap to eat crap foods? I wish that I would have learned this lesson the first few times that it was taught so I had time to compare older workouts to workouts on this new diet but there aren't too many more long workouts left.

Don't worry though I still enjoy my ice cream most nights and a few Chips Ahoy Soft Batch cookies each day. So I haven't completely fallen off the wagon.

Spring "Break"?

25 days


Last Weeks Totals
Swim 9964 yards (5.66 miles)
Bike 174.7 miles
Run 20.6 miles

I haven't written anything in a while. That's not because there hasn't been anything going on, quite the opposite is true, there's just too much going on. I took the week of Spring Break off of work to get a long training week in, bought a new bike and had my first ever 30+ mile running week.

Before Kati got injured we had planned on me taking Spring Break off from work for a tough week of training, one that would be very difficult to balance alongside work. I was scheduled for 21 hours total, 200+ miles on the bike, 30+ miles running and about 9,000 yards in the pool.

This was a great week of training that I rather enjoyed. Generally I'm trying to fit training into a work schedule that gets to be a juggling act but having the week off, being able to sleep in and do the workout whenever I wanted to was oh so very nice.

This was the first week of really pleasant weather we've had through our long Texas winter so I was finally able to start training in race day gear to make sure that there wasn't going to be any chafing issues. Our highs were in the low 70's and I actually got sunburned for the first time this year because I just wasn't used to putting on sunscreen before heading out on a long ride.

Over all the week was fairly uneventful except that I made one of the vest purchases ever. I sold my Specialized Allez Elite and bought a Felt B16. This is such a sexy machine. On my first ride I had to get used to the new wheels and being down in aero position for as much of the ride as possible. As an example of how much a good bike can do for you, Monday I rode 45 miles on the old bike and on Thursday did 55 miles on the new bike and had a 1 mph average improvement between the two rides. I was stoked!



The weekend threw me a huge curve ball that I did not expect. Throughout the week the weather was perfect but then Texas weather did what it does best and brought in the snow for Saturday and Sunday which sidelined my planned 115 mile ride on Saturday. This was unfortunate but I had a back up plan.

The Two Sides To Training

There are two sides to training for an Ironman. There's the physical side, the one that most people are aware of, ask questions and are curious about. They want to know "How many miles did you ride this week?" or "What is your long run up to now?"

The other side is just as important if not more so. And that's the mental side.

I think that we can all agree that the brain is just like any other muscle, if it's not worked out and kept sharp it will lose it's strength. For me that mental strength has come from doing many hours in the pool, and on the road. But also like a muscle that mental strength can get injured, sore and fatigued when pushed too hard for too long and then it needs a little bit of a break.

This is where I found myself last week.

The last 12 weeks have been met with early mornings, runs that end just in time to take a shower, grab something to eat, give Kati and good morning and good night kiss and pack my bag for the next days workout just before going to bed. Constantly smelling like chlorine which also continues to permeates from your skin to the point that you sweat the smell. 12 weeks of this would drive anyone to the breaking point eventually. Mornings start to feel earlier, long rides go by slower and get a little bit harder and runs start to get inexplicably slower. It is at this point when I started to lose the desire to train and wonder if all this was worth the reward at then end of the tunnel. A reward that was less than guaranteed and one that I had no idea what it would be like. If I cross that finish line will I say all this was worth it? I do believe that I will.

I wish that I could say that I thought I was immune to these mental struggles for some special reason. That as a person that had signed up and was training for an Ironman I somehow superseded the average Joe's ability and mental capabilities. But in the end I always knew that it was going to happen sooner or later. I'm just glad that it was later into training.

I am glad to say that fortunately this difficult period passed within a few days and I was back on track and ready to hit the road. This is good since next week is going to be my most brutal week yet and probably the most difficult in all my training. I'll have to write about that after it happens.

Rest Week & The Wall

Rest weeks are always a sight for sore eyes - and muscles for that matter. Typically rest weeks come about every three weeks or 16 days of hard workouts and then 5 days of rest. Now rest weeks aren't 5 days of sitting at home on the couch eating Bon Bons but are just decreased volume weeks. Where last week was a 14.5 hour week this week was only 8 hours. Through all the training for the Half Ironman and during the first 10 weeks of Ironman training I've never really felt like I needed a rest week for any other reason than muscle recovery, until now. Last week was the first time that I've really felt just fatigued and as if I couldn't get enough sleep. Hooray for rest weeks!

On the Saturday after a rest week comes some of the hardest days though. Usually this is when you have a hard brick day - or a day where you have a long ride immediately followed by a long run. These days are important because they are basically race day rehearsals, you get a chance to try and hone in your nutrition plan on the long ride and make sure that it will work and not upset your stomach on the long run that follows. You also try and wear what you're going to wear on race day to make sure that it's not going to chafe. Last Saturday was one of those days.

In a masochistic kind of way I really like these workouts. It's a good way to gauge your increased fitness from the last time you had a hard brick day a few weeks before. It's definitely hard to get motivated to get out the door and start one of these workouts but once you finish a hard 5+ hour brick day there is a great feeling of accomplishment for the rest of the day if not weeks to come.

Last Saturday consisted of a 70 mile ride and a 7 mile run down in Cedar Hill with the coach. I learned that Cedar Hill is called Cedar Hill for a reason, there are hills there to be had. Most hills are just "hills" but only the epic ones get names like "The Wall". We first approached The Wall from the direction that would put us descending it. I usually do pretty good with steep descents and getting up to fast speeds on the bike without being shaken by the speeds, maybe it has something to do with driving a motorcycle. As we approached The Wall it was just like going over the first drop of a roller coaster, as you approached the crest of the hill you couldn't see the road in front of you or just how steep the hill was until just before you started descending. At this point it's too late to turn back and I might have let an "Oh sh*t" slip out. The decent was super fast and luckily on a fairly decent road without many bumps. After the decent we turned around and decided to climb it. I changed the display on my watch so that it would show the gradient of the hill as we climbed so I could see just how nasty this thing really was. 99% of the time I tend to stay seated on climbs because I prefer to keep my cadence steady and reserve some strength for the rest of the ride instead of standing up and getting real physical with it and expending a lot of energy. The climb didn't give me much of a choice, If I didn't stand up I was going to be going backwards. After I stood up and made a couple of peddle strokes my rear tires started skidding out from underneath me. I had to stand up in order to peddle but if I stood up I didn't have enough weight on my back tire for it to get traction. I looked down at my watch and saw 23%, 27% 35% and finally 37%! I tried to confirm this gradient on Map My Ride's website where you can map a stretch of road and it will show you the profile of what you've mapped out along with the gradient of the hills but I found that Map My Ride won't show you anything over 20%. So I'm going to have to trust what my watch was showing me.

I have no idea what the true gradient of that climb was but I do know that I've never seen a hill that steep, climbed a hill that steep or even though that it was legal to have a road in a neighborhood that steep. Luckily it was really only about a tenth of a mile long or I wouldn't have made it.

Bad News

75 Days

Last weeks totals
Swim: 6500 yards
Bike: 136.2 miles
Run: 25.4 miles
Total time 14:38

Of all the things that an athlete can get - sore muscles, satisfaction, exhaustion - the one thing that they don't want to get is an injury leading up to a race. One thing that I've been surprised to find is that for some reason doctors don't understand that the ability to recover from an injury in time for a race isn't good news. Recovery 12 weeks from a race is good news. Being healed by race day means nothing more than you're healed but now unprepared for the race and could possibly re-injure yourself due to the lack of preparedness.

I say all this because Kati has found herself with a nice little injury. She had an MRI done with the speculative diagnosis being a torn Labrum in her hip. This diagnosis was squashed by the orthopedic surgeon that we visited with to see if she just needed physical therapy or if surgery was in order. The surgeon explained that a torn Labrum is common for football players, gymnasts and dancers who take falls or get hit while their legs are in unnatural positions and that runners just don't get torn Labrums. This was good news as well as bad news because we had received the original diagnosis about 5 days before we met with the orthopedic surgeon, that was five days in which Kati was able to prepare mentally and emotionally to the idea that her race might be done. Now to get the news that it just might be either Tendinitis or a stress fracture may just mean that the door still has a crack of light coming through or could still be a game ender. Now we didn't know what to prepare or hope for.

Before we even started training for this race Kati and I made an agreement that if one of us was unable to continue training or race due to injury that the other would press madly on. Talking six months ago it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Why should both of us sit out when only one of us can't race? But actually having that decision to make was much more difficult than I ever would have imagined. Kati has been my rock during this training. For some reason being out on a 5 hour bike ride is much easier knowing that Kati is out there too, even if we aren't riding together. I know that she's out there suffering through the same cold and the wind and that she's having a good time and somehow that knowledge strengthens me no matter how many miles we are away from each other.

I'll tell you one thing though that I've said before and will continue to say. This chick is a rock. Through all of the "I'm out, now I'm in" she's been able to find a silver lining that few would have been able to. Where most would have used this disappointment to fall into a hole of self pity she has used it to reflect on all the great races that she has done and begun looking forward to training for the Ironman race she might want to do in the future.

Through the next ten weeks I guarantee that she will continue to be my strength and motivation.

Cold & Stupid Cold

87 Days

Last week had quite a few events that made it post worthy. It was rest and recovery week so the distances that I would normally post are pretty inconsequential so I won't bother you with them since they are well below the normal weeks workouts and for other reasons that you will read about below. This is probably going to be a long post so grab some milk and cookies.

It all started on Tuesday when I was supposed to wake up early and get a run done before work. Right after getting up I knew that something wasn't right so I went back to bed thinking that I could get my swim in during lunch and the run done after work. So I slept in a bit. Even after a little extra sleep I wasn't feeling any better but pressed madly on with my morning routine and tried to head into work. Instead I headed right into the back end of a '94 Chevy 1500 truck and crushed the front end of my car.

This was a fantastic way to start my day and give my stomach a little extra jostling that it really didn't need on this particular morning. I finally made it to work and made no one any guarantees as to my ability to work or the duration at which I would be staying. My decision was made for me when I made a run for the bathroom and didn't know whether to sit or kneel. That's a decision that you don't want to leave to a coin flip. At this point I decided that it was time to go home for the day.

About 11 o'clock is when I started making runs to the bathroom and threw up every 1.5 hours for the rest of the afternoon. Normally being sick sucks but add on top of that the fact that my back was really starting to kill me from the accident and everything just compounded. I had to get to the chiropractor but the last thing that I needed was him twisting my gut in my current condition. I waited as long as I could and finally went in at about 3 o'clock and warned them that I might have to make a "run for the border" without notice or explanation - which I think was explanation enough. Luckily I only had a few false alarms during my visit but nothing productive. I spent the rest of the day on the couch and managed to eat 4 crackers in the afternoon and 2 pieces of toast later that night. Oddly enough though I felt nearly good as new the next morning. Go figure.

Saturday was the other very eventful day.

We've only had two really cold days this winter that just so happen to fall on a Saturday. One was right after Christmas and the other was last Saturday. The one that was after Christmas Kati and I used a Get Out of Jail Free card with our coach and stayed inside for our ride and then headed out for short runs in the afternoon. I always felt guilty about that day and felt as though we were unjustifiably copping out of a workout. So when this Saturday came and it was 25 degrees with a 16mph wind from the north that made the temperature in the mid teens I felt like this was something that we needed to do, that it until I went to let the dog out that morning. After I went outside for the first time I was constantly checking my email to see if our coach had emailed me to say that it was too cold to go out and gave us an alternate workout for the day. Alas it was in vain, no email. Then I was waiting on Kati to catch a draft of the temperature and say that she thought it best for us to stay in. This was for naught as well, that chick's a rock.

We headed out at about 9:30 and it was frigid. Heading south was no problem but once you turned north and into the wind it got a little tough. Overall I felt fairly well bundled for the day and was only really hurting in my hands, feet and face.
I learned early on not to let any water from my water bottles drip down my chin because it froze almost instantaneously. Taking in water became more of a difficulty as the day progressed. I had four bottles with me, two were in cages attached to my bike frame and two were in cages attached to my seat post. The two that were up front started to turn to slush at about 1:30 but were still of some use. I tried to start using the bottles in the back at about 2 hours and the nozzles were frozen shut and completely unusable. Eventually the bottles up front were completely slush and so I had to transfer water from the bottles in the back by breaking the ice up that was on the inside to get to the water that hadn't frozen yet and pouring it into the only properly functioning water bottle that I had left.

Nutrition was also a problem. It was so cold that the thought that controlled my mind was how much farther I had left and how cold it was instead of thinking when I needed to eat next and what I needed to eat. I still had a 5.5 mile run after this 60 mile ride and would need some kind of fuel in my system if I was going to have a good run. The other thing that was on my mind was how I was going to run on frozen feet.

I finally finished my 3.5 hour ride and couldn't feel my hands or feet and the colony of icicles on my beard was starting to get pretty ridiculous. My initial plan was to go inside for a little bit and put my feet under some warm water to get feeling back into them before I headed out on the run but I changed my mind at the last minute and knew that if I got warm then my chances of getting back out the door got less and less. So I slapped my shoes on, grabbed the dog and was gone. I don't know if any of you have run with really cold feet before but it's like slapping the bottom of your feet with 2x4's with every step. Eventually when you do get feeling back your feet start to feel unevenly swollen like you have marbles in your shoes. This took about two miles to get rid of. The problem now was that I was running on an empty stomach which generally leads to GI issues for me. I was surprised at how fast the run went by though, I was expecting it to feel like an eternity but once I started getting blood flow to my extremities with the higher HR things actually started to get mildly comfortable.

The entire workout was about 4.5 hours and by the end the temperature had risen to 30 degree but with the wind chill it was still in the low 20's.

There were two reasons that I never turned around and went home during this ride. First is I knew that Kati was out there also and she was slated to do 80 miles in those horrible conditions so what did I really have to complain about. Second was that I knew I could use this day in the future for mental strength. On the next hard training day when I'm doubting my ability to finish the day or the Ironman I knew I could look back on this ride and tell myself that if I can make it through that hard day I can make it through this one as well.

Initially after the ride I thought that Kati and I were pretty tough for making it through the day but as the day went on I realized that we were just really stupid. It was way too cold to be out there for that long (I believe Kati's ride was about 6 hours that day) and I will never go out in those brittle temperatures again. It is now Wednesday and I wish I was exaggerating but I still don't have all the feeling back in my fingertips. I'm starting to wonder if I got some minor frostbite and hope that it will eventually go away and isn't permanent.

To War!

100 Days

Last weeks totals
Swim: 5700 yards
Bike: 123.4 miles
Run: 19.3 miles

I haven't written in a while I guess because training hasn't really been as epic as I imagined it would be. I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying the training just that there aren't adventures every week that are worth repeating, except one that is so horrible that I won't relive it via text. The rides and runs are getting longer and longer while the swims are hovering around 5700-5800 yards a week, but I'm sure these will get longer soon enough.

The real news this week is that I believe I have inadvertently started a civil war of sorts on another blog. That blog being Fat Cyclist, a very well known and highly regarded blog to most cyclists including Lance Armstrong. Fatty, aka Eldon Nelson, is an amazing man that has spent countless hours in the fight against Cancer, a war that took his wife's life back in August. During this battle he has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Lance Armstrong Foundation via his dedicated readers and many Fat Cyclist Chapters all over the nation.

Here's where I come in. I have been reading Fat Cyclist for a number of years now, mainly for the stories of epic rides that have gone wrong and the situations that Eldon has gotten himself into and somehow makes it out of in one piece. I rather enjoy Eldon's writing style and his ability to find humor in the most dire of circumstances. This gift has kept me coming back week after week, month after month and year after year. Until a few months ago that is. His confidence has turned to cockiness and his success turned to bragging.

On a much smaller scale I can relate. Writing for a music blog sometimes we get free albums as well as concert tickets. We use those opportunities to review the albums as well as the show to try and inform and help readers realize whether they will like the music or not. Eldon does the exact opposite. When presented with free items, items that I could only dream about getting in the mail, his time is spent more in a "look what I got" attitude. This attitude over the past few months has worn me out but I continued reading. Until yesterday that is.

Yesterday Fat Cyclist posted an article that nearly sent me through the roof, it's title "I Could Easily Do An Ironman". My initial reaction was probably knee jerk and I probably should have taken a few moments before commenting but I didn't. And then the flood gates opened and I had every dedicated reader coming out of the wood work with pitchforks and torches in search of my head. I even had Fatty's new girlfriend on my scent. I made mention to the fact that I believed the tone of the blog had changed of late and has taken a direction that I no longer find enjoyable and that Fatty may have gotten "to big for his britches" to which Fatty replied with a list of nonsensical explanation as to why the whole article was to be taken as satire. Explanations such as:

1. I make an outrageous assertion: that I can do an Ironman without working for it.
2. I go on to disprove that assertion for the entire post. Such as: I’m so tired by the end of the ride I need a giant meal and a good night’s sleep before doing anything else. I am only able to run half the distance, after which I am completely beat and starved again.

So you're tired and hungry after a hard workout? Aren't we all. For some reason that doesn't shout SATIRE! I might be able to see this as satire if Eldon hadn't brought up in the past that he was sure that he could complete an Ironman "without any particular training in the other disciplines." There's only so many times that a comment can be made in jest before you have to start thinking that this guy is serious.

Why am I in such an uproar about this anyway? I have a few ideas on that.

1. I have much more invested in an Ironman than 99% of Fat Cyclists readers. Therefore making such an "outrageous assertion" hits a little closer to home for me.
2. I have neglected my wife, my friends and my family in order to achieve this goal
3. I've spent countless amounts of money in coaching, bikes, equipment and nutrition. So to hear someone say that they could do it right now with no further training sets me on edge.

I had all but written off Fat Cyclist when I received an email from a friend saying that someone commented on the blog that had the same ideas that I have.

I usually subscribe to the “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” school of thought but I have to agree with some of what Patrick said. I’ve been a reader for a long time, as was my husband, and we’ve bought a lot of fat cyclist gear and made a number of contributions to LiveStrong in Susan’s name. However, the tone of the blog has changed as have the comments. There used to be a time when those commenting were either teasing Fatty and/or each other, while Fatty himself lived up to the description on the Twin Six site as an “endearingly self-deprecating” individual. Those days seem to be gone (really a $190 sweater from the guy who once mocked Assos?) and some days the comments section borders on idolatry. My husband stopped reading as a result while I have lurked quietly. I would have continued doing so but felt maybe someone should put in a word for Patrick’s perspective.
(hyperlink added for clarity)

Eureka an ally!

It was definitely not my intention to start a rift in the Fat Cyclist kiddie pool but to maybe give Eldon something to think about and possibly re-read his last few months of posts in comparison to posts from a year ago in order to see the changes that have taken place. I might keep the Fat Cyclist sticker on my car and I will probably continue to wear my Win Susan T-shirt but my days as a dedicated reader are done.

Keep My Mouth Shut/HR Oddities

117 Days

Last Weeks Totals:
Bike: 116.9 miles
Run: 21.8 miles
Swim: 5700 yards (3.24 miles)

Remind me next time that I take an entire week off of work to keep my mouth shut and not tell my coach. Once he found out that Kati and I both had the week off he filled us up in what he called a "full week". The totals that you see above are very close to the end of week totals that we had during peak training for the Half Ironman but with just a little bit more pool time.

There was one interesting development this week though that I never saw coming nor can I explain. My average heart rate has dropped dramatically. During my first two long rides my average heart rate was 151 on the first and 156 on the second. The 151 is at the top end of my zone 2 which is the zone that I want to be in as much as possible so obviously 156 is too high for a long ride. On Thursday I had a moderately long ride of 35 miles and in the end my average HR was 146. This is low but not low enough that I started wondering what was going on but on Saturday I started to think that something was up. Saturday was a 55 mile ride with a 20 minute run following the ride. This was a long ride after a pretty tough week of training already so my legs were fairly fatigued already and not really firing on all cylinders to begin with so when I saw a low HR I wasn't initially too surprised (I tend not to look at my speed during a long ride so I can't attest to a certain speed attributing to anything).

By the end of my ride my average HR was at 140! There were times that it dropped below that and I pushed a little harder at some portions of the ride in order to bring it back up. 140 is insanely low for me considering that my zone 1 or warm up and cool down HR is suppose to range between 111-140. I have no idea what is happening and if any of you have any ideas I am all ears. We'll have to see what happens on this coming Saturday's 55 mile ride.

The other strange development with my HR is how fast it is dropping during rest. I had noticed on Thursday that it was dropping quite a bit when I was at stop lights and on Saturday decided that I would pay particular attention to it. At one stop light that was about 40 miles in I was at the top of a small hill and my HR was at 151 and by the time the light turned green between 1:30-2:00 minutes later my HR was at 108. That's a 43bpm drop in only 2 minutes! I know that this isn't completely unheard of but it is for me.

I understand that the lower your HR and the faster your HR drops after a workout the fitter you are but that is supposed to be something that is gradually gained over time not something that happens over night.

Any takers want to explain this one?

Share and Share Alike

128 Days

I like to think that my parents raised me well. I learned not to hit girls unless they're related to you or deserve it and that if I don't have anything nice to say not to say anything at all until the person you're going to talk bad about leaves. They also taught me to share. Now I think that I share pretty good but there are some things that I hate to share with anyone namely my 49ers mug, DVD's (these never come back in one piece if at all) and the Boston Cream Pie that Kati makes for me when I've been good (I rarely get this pie). But most of all I hate to share swim lanes. If you're at an official natatorium where actual swim metes take place then the lanes are usually pretty wide and are therefore more conducive to sharing. But at the local gym pool they tend to use cheap lane dividers and the lanes are only about 4 feet wide. What ends up happening is that when the person swimming in the next lane is bigger than you are your lane starts to shrink just from their waves pushing against the lane dividers. This makes doing your swim set difficult enough but throw another person in the lane and it becomes down right impossible.

Before we get into my story let's discuss pool etiquette.

1. Never just get into a lane that another person is using without asking them first even if you have to wait until they are done with their set.
2. If I didn't ask for your opinion about my stroke then I don't want to hear it.
3. I'm not here to coach you I'm here to swim my own set.
4. I have a hard enough time getting into the cold pool to start my set so please bring your kick turn down a notch so that I can get wet at my own pace.
5. Appropriate swim attire please. Not every one was meant to wear a Speedo.

So last week I had a simple swim workout that I had to do during lunch at the local 24 Hour Fitness. This is not the usual location that I use and didn't know that they only had three lanes to begin with and there were two of us going. Luckily while we were changing there were two lanes that opened up so we snagged them. Just as I was about to get in I saw a poacher that was about to get into my friends lane. I told him that I didn't think that was a great idea because it was the outside lane and had the ladder that one of them was sure to run into at some point. He asked if he could share my lane and reluctantly I agreed. Now that it's been established that we are going to be sharing a lane the question arises as to how we are going to swim, are we going to go with the whole I stay on the right side and he stays on the left or are we going to do it so that we always stay to our right so that one side ends up being the down lane and the other side is the back lane. The second system only works if both of you swim at approximately the same pace or after a while you end up on the other person's heels and you have to hope that the person is somewhat considerate to let you pass at the wall. Unfortunately we went with this system and about every 300 yards I was right up on him luckily he did let me pass.

The other problem with sharing a narrow lane is that you risk contact when passing. This could be a simple brush of shoulders, hitting hands when you both go to stroke at the same time or the worst is a meeting of the minds when one of you isn't paying attention and you run smack dap into each other. We had kind of a combination of both hitting hands and heads. I was doing one of my technique drills where you swim with your hands in fists to learn that your stroke consists of more than just your hands and that you can use your entire arm. So I'm making my way down the lane and am preparing for our pass by getting as far over as I can. when I go to stroke the timing was perfect and I punched to poor schmuck right in the head. We both popped up and did the obligatory "Are you OK?", "Fine, and you?"," Fine" and then we were on our way again. Now this made the rest of the workout awkward because now I'm concentrating on not colliding with the guy again instead of what I should be focusing on.

I guess the moral of this story is don't share a lane with me or you'll get out in worse shape than when you got in. Apparently I'm an abusive swimmer.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

This week has been the easiest week I have ever had during an actual training regimen. This is not because I am so insanely fit that the workout weeks have to be extremely difficult before I'll even break a sweat, believe me that is far from it. Nor is it that my coach is such a nice guy and throws multiple days off in a row at us just so that we continue sending him a check each month. No, the week has been so easy because I ended up getting sick on Monday afternoon. That will definitely put a kink in your plans.

Come Monday after lunch I was starting to get a scratchy throat and by that night I had quite a bit of congestion in my head and was starting to get ear aches in both ears. I went to bed that night thinking that I was not going to be waking up the next day. Luckily I felt quite a bit better in the morning. I still had some pretty serious congestion in my head, a stiff neck and a sore throat and even though I was feeling better thought it best to head to the doctor anyway. I was tested for Strep as well as Mono. Both came back negative so the doctor threw a Z-Pack at me and said if I wasn't better in a couple of days to come back. It's now Friday and my main complain is a persistent cough and pressure behind my ears.

I ended up taking Monday through Wednesday off completely and did an easy trainer ride last night and a short but brisk swim this morning. I'm hoping to be able to get out tomorrow for a 40 mile ride but will be waiting until it warms up a bit before I venture out.

I'm hoping that this oncoming illness has been the reason that my rides lately have been harder than they should've been but I'm not getting my hopes up that come next Saturday I'll be flying down the road like never before.