Shortly after I finished the Shawigan Lake triathlon, I wrote about my experiences, frustrations and thoughts regarding my continuing adventures in the world of triathlon. For a refresher, go here. Go ahead, really…I’ll wait. It’s important. You’ll need this as reference for what I’m about to say…

All caught up? Right then…are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin…

I’m pulling out of Locarno and Sooke.

Whoomf. There it is. I’ve actually said it…

This is not an easy decision - I’ve been struggling with it for several weeks. However, at this time, I cannot…I will not…race under the circumstances with which I’m faced. I’ve tried everything short of robbing a bank to secure a bike for the rest of the season, and failed. I’m not about to put 1/3 of the cost of my Cervelo towards the rental of a bike for 8-10 weeks; it’s lighting cash on fire as far as I’m concerned and I’m not in the habit of throwing money away like that.

So, after a long period of reflection…emphasis on the long…and after consultation with several people both in and outside of the triathlon community, I’ve come to the following conclusion (and pardon me if I’m repeating some points that I’ve made in previous posts):

• I’m no longer content with just finishing
• My abilities, especially on the bike, are good enough that I need to match it to the gear that I use because to do otherwise would be limiting my time significantly and cause untold frustration
• I not only promised myself that I’d finish the series, but I’d finish it strong in Sooke with a new PB under 90 minutes. There is, quite simply and succinctly, no way in hell that is doing to happen under these current circumstances.

Taking those things into account, here’s the dilemma that I faced.

1. Do I continue to race this season using Luigi, frustrated at my times and unable to do much about it due to the restrictions of the bike that I’m using not only in total time but also in hill climbing ability - UBC has one major hill and a few smaller ones, but Sooke is a very technical course similar to Shawnigan from what I’ve been told. Yes, at the end of my season I’ll have completed the series, but my times will be completely inaccurate to what they should be based on my talent - there will essentially be a Barry-Bonds-esque asterisk beside all of my times, and when I discuss them with people it would be a constant apology for my times and the offering of caveats - honestly I think it would make me look and seem like a whining little snotty kid offering excuses for why my times suck. Or…
2. Do I flush the last two races in the series, put it off until next year, bump all of my plans by one year and focus on dropping my weight down to my target of 175, get the bike I need and train long and hard on it until it feels like an extension of my body, and race next year at the top of my game, personally - thereby achieving times that honestly reflect my abilities and talents? I would essentially be disappointing myself by not hitting my personal goals this season and Ironman would become my 41st birthday present to myself rather than my 40th (however, this didn’t really affect me as much as I thought it would since Ironman is no longer the pinnacle of my triathlon career now - there’s another dream, a bigger dream, and I won’t talk about it until I think I’m ready for it - more to come later). However, I’d eliminate my frustration with the current status quo…I’d also turn Walnut Grove into my last race of the season and treat it as a baseline fitness test rather than an appraisal of my true racing talent.

Like I said, I’ve consulted with a lot of people regarding these questions, and every single one of them had valuable input and gave me a lot to consider. In the end, I made my decision based on two things:

1. I’m not where I want to be, physically…yet. Once I am, I’ll be more confident and ready to race at the front of the pack. In the meanwhile there are things that I really need to work on - open water swimming, foot speed, maintaining a rock solid cadence…I need to get the skillset together before I’ll really feel comfortable and happy with where I am with my race times. Like I said before, I’m highly competitive, more so than I realized, and racing at the back of the pack, maintaining rather than improving, just finishing, is no longer fun for me.
2. The frustration that I feel with the limitations of my current bike is the overwhelming factor in my decision…if I could afford the $1700+ for my bike now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. However, I’ve already blown my budget for this season, so that bike ain’t happenin’ until the off season when I can get it at a really great price. I’m not going to frustrate myself any more than I need to - this is supposed to be fun, remember? Dragging my off-road mountain bike around a tri-course is not fun, period. It pisses me off, and I don’t want to go through that again on a circuit that really means something to me. The Subaru series is the epitome of sprint distance tri-racing in BC, I think, and I mean to give it the respect and dedication that it deserves. If that means I have to wait a year to train and attack it with everything I have, then so be it.

Am I pissed off that things have happened this way? Yeah, you’re damn right I am - I’m really pissed. I don’t like to change my goals and plans - it’s disheartening to me. I’ve tossed and turned over this, and didn’t enter into it lightly. I think I’d be more pissed off though to know that every time I look at my results years down the road, they weren’t representative of who I was and what I could truly do, how I could perform. I’ve used this analogy before - you don’t play hockey in figure skates -  and it pretty much summarizes how I feel regarding this issue. Ultimately I’m the one that has to look in the mirror and face my own demons - I want to do so on my terms, not on anyone elses’ or anything elses’. So while I’m disappointed, I’m also content that this is the correct decision for me, right here, right now. My training goals aren’t changing at all - I still intend to hit every single one of those by September - the only thing that’s changing is my triathlon race schedule for this season (I am going to be adding my 5 and 10K run races into my schedule - partially so I can make myself feel better at having something on there besides Walnut Grove). Essentially I’m taking one step back so I can take eight steps forward next year.

Because ultimately, there will be no asterisk beside my name.

OK, so I’m done my massive project for work. Only lost one day of training…thank God today was a rest day. Tomorrow’s a test tri at the West Van Aquatic Centre - 20 minutes in the pool, 40 minutes on the trainer, 20 minutes on the treadmill. Then I go right into taper Sunday morning. Things are happening quickly…I’m actually a little freaked out that Locarno has roared up so fast.

Secondly, news on the bike front…I’ve decided to axe the bike from work-bro. The cost was just too high…for that price I might as well go buy a Trek 1000 and throw some clip-on aero bars, and at least have a bike I can use as a road trainer out of it. John at Pacific Multisport has secured a bike that I can use until the end of the season, but it’s 500 bones and again, for the price (including clipless pedals and shoes) I might as well invest into a road bike and pick up a tri-specific bike in the office season.

So I’ve decided to hit Bicycle Sports Pacific and Different Bikes after my session tomorrow morning - I’m going to throw six or seven bikes on the trainers in the showroom and give them all a good 20-30 minute session to see what clicks with me - right now I’m targeting Felt, Cannondale, Giant, Trek, Janis, and Devinci. If I can pull it, I’m going to have a new bike by the beginning of next week…if I can’t…

Well, I’m just not going to think about that bridge until I have to cross it.

Tonight’s open water swim with Peter and Jen was unfortunately called off by me at 9am this morning when a $2 million job hit my desk along with a due date of tomorrow afternoon.

Yep, it’s 7:25pm and I’ve been at my desk for 12 hours straight. I’ll probably be here for at least another two tonight, and probably another 16 or so tomorrow.

John Malone has a great little quote he likes to pull out in times like these…”If you want to give God a good laugh, tell him what your plans are for your life…”

I pretty much have no choice - if I don’t get this done, I’m shooting myself in the foot professionally. If I do get it done, I’ll lose at least 1-2 training sessions in the hardest week leading up to Locarno - it seems that something like this happens to me about a week or so before each race, kind of like a last minute intestinal fortitude check.

And just to kick a guy when he’s down, I had a little discussion with my work-bro regarding his bike. Understandably he’s a little apprehensive to lend out a $2500 TT bike to someone he works with, so he’s asked me as part of the consideration on the loan to supply the following things:

• increased household insurance policy to cover the bike
• my own tires
• my own tubes
• my own rims
• obviously, an investment in clipless shoes
• a complete tuneup which I was already going to do (as well as a fitting by John at Pacific Multisport)

Basically, I’d be looking at around $300-600 for a good set of wheels, $50 for tubes, $100 for shoes…and for all of that I might as well buy a new road bike, like Cin’s Trek. I’ve got one more lead to follow up on, but at this point it looks like Luigi’s going to be tackling that hill at UBC on the 13th.

Sigh. Well, it’s times like these that show us what we’re really made of…

Esse quam videri, kids. Esse quam videri…

I’ve been looking forward to this week since Shawnigan Lake, in a weird sort of way. This is my final week of training before I taper for Locarno, and it’s marked as ‘heavy’ on my training calendar…my first experience of ‘heavy’ Tier 2 training since I started the program. It’s pretty much a benchmark swim, benchmark bike and run 2-A-Day, open water swim, and a test triathlon on Saturday - 30 minutes in the water Zone 1, 45 minutes on the bike Zone 2, and a 20 minute run Zone 1. I’ ve been so geared up to feel like I’m really hitting this thing hard that I was up at 5:07am this morning and down into the gym to do a heavy 45 minute hill session on the trainer before work.

The bike workout went extremely well - I did feel some tweaking in my right quad towards the end of the session, and thought that I’d have to watch it for the rest of the day. I know I’m only supposed to be climbing for about 20-30 minutes, but I wound up on Level 12-14 for almost the entire 45 minute session, averaging around 120-130 watts and around 11.4 MPH. I was totally energized when I got upstairs and the work day flew by - I couldn’t help but notice that I was far more positive and charged up than usual today.

The run was even better for me, personally. The last time I did a benchmark long interval session on Eric Hamber’s track, I could barely squeak out 3 x 800M repeats at 7:00/KM. My recovery rate was 4-5 minutes between repeats…basically, my baseline fitness sucked ass.

Today was a different story. First 1 x 800 was 6:08 - I was ready for that, still labouring a bit in my shins and hammies from this morning’s climb. Second 800M, I had to blink a couple of times and recheck my splits - 4:53.

Yep, sub-five minutes on a 800 for the first time ever. My legs were warmed up, I felt great, and I had AC/DC cranked on my iPod - all things conspired to make it a fast 2 laps.

Third set was 5:33 - a bit slower, but I didn’t fuel properly (hell, at all) before I left the office, so I was basically just running on water. Still, sub-6:00 in my book is freakin’ awesome.

Fourth set was 5:29, and by the end of it, I felt like I had enough in the tank to do a couple more repeats, easily. However, the best part of it was my recovery rate - I was averaging a peak HR each repeat of 151-157, and it was only taking 2 minutes on average to drop back down to 116-118. My heart is really working efficiently and feels strong and healthy; the fact that I’m a full 10 BMP lower than my last benchmark long intervals session, and easily 2+ minutes faster on recovery tells me that my baseline fitness has improved by leaps and bounds over the past three weeks. I feel thinner, lighter, stronger and faster on my feet, and barring any Shawnigan-calibre swim or bike meltdowns, I should set a new PB on the 5K at Locarno.

Recovery after the session let me know that I’ve strained my right quad somewhat - I spent about twenty minutes thumping it with the Homedics massager after dinner and while it loosened it up somewhat, I’m still feeling a dullish stabbing pain in the back of my thigh. Tomorrow’s my open water swim practice with Peter and a friend of Cin’s from her office, so I’ll take it easy and let my Zoot do most of the work - it’s more of an acclimatizing thing than anything else for me. Friday’s a rest day, so I’ll make sure I do some leg inversions and I might do the super-hot epsom bath/cold compass combo to get some good recovery on that leg.

Yippie ki-yay…I’m starting to get excited again. T-Minus 12 days.

Esse quam videri.

Canada turned 141 years old yesterday. I celebrated it by spending a hour in the gym in West Van, then 35 minutes in the pool on a Zone 2 tempo swim, then two+ hours in traffic trying to get home cause some moron decided she wanted to throw herself off of the Ironworkers’ Memorial Bridge….no, wait, she changed her mind….no, wait, she changed her mind again….no, wait….{BLAM}.

One sniper could’ve solved the whole problem.

I’m sorry your life sucks, but please consider the PAIN IN THE FREAKIN’ ASS you are to several thousand other people before you decided to consider to possibly somewhat maybe huck yourself off of one of only two bridges between the North Shore and downtown. Oh, and did I mention that the other one was a parking lot as well due to an accident mid-span?

Do the world a favour…want to off yourself? Do it at home. Yes, that’s me being a callous bastard. This is also me making no apologies for it.

Sigh.

Anyway, back to the training - weights went well. Definitely seeing significant increases in weights and reps. Swim was supposed to be a long interval session - 100M slow, 100M at race pace - but I had absolutely no gas left after trashing my legs in the gym so I switched to a tempo swim and did 800M in 35 minutes which is a new benchmark for me. It’s also painfully slow but right now I’m just focusing on finishing Locarno and I’ve switched off from Learning Mode so I don’t confuse myself mentally before the race. Nothing like learning a new technique step with three swims to go before a race - that’s a recipe for confusion, floundering, and being pulled out of Burrard Inlet on a kayak…

No new news on the bike front - work-bro is going to check his frame size tonight and let me know if it’s even worth it tomorrow. I’ve also got John at Pacific Multisport inquiring with a friend of his who might have a road bike for rent. Hopefully by this weekend the bike issue will be cleared up. At this moment in time, I’m leaning towards racing Locaro regardless of the outcome - however I’m not pushing myself in that direction forcibly, just because I’m also cognisant of how frustrated and pissed off I was after Shawnigan. One the one hand I’ve committed myself to doing all three races in the Subaru Sprint Series - it’s my number one goal for the year and if I don’t do it, I’m going to feel like all of this has been for naught. Conversely if I race Locarno and Sooke, I might just frustrate myself into complete and total inaction during the offseason and that’s a recipe for disaster since I’m supposed to be thinking about Montreal next September.

Gah. I hate my brain sometimes.

Well, it looks like I’m getting my legs back now after a sluggish last week or so. I did take the extra day off on Saturday and bumped my brick to Sunday; I just knew early Saturday morning that I wasn’t feeling my best and the additional 24 hours to rest and recuperate helped immeasurably. Sunday afternoon I blasted through 60 minutes on the bike in what can only be described as sweltering conditions - I thought I’d do my brick on the trainer so I could avoid the tendency to go further and longer than I should on my street bike (plus I wanted to watch the Germany/Spain Euro final, I’ll admit). However, the air exchanger in our weight room at the condo seemed to be on the fritz so it was almost as hot inside as it was outside (mid-30s - about 90+ degrees for our neighbours to the south). I came off the bike feeling good in the legs, but a bit tight in the hips - as I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t like the recumbent cycle in our gym since my leg length falls between two settings on the seat so prolonged rides actually hurt after a while. The run more than made up for it though - I ran for the entire 30 minutes. No rests, no walks, constantly hovering between 3.7 and 4 MPH, a nice comfortable steady pace. Kept myself well hydrated throughout the brick, and really felt great afterwards - a good long positive workout was exactly what I needed to pull out of this low energy ebb cycle.

This week is my hardest training week heading into next Sunday’s taper before the Locarno tri on the 13th…I still haven’t secured a bike yet, and I’m having a bit of an internal war as to whether I’m going to go through the frustration of racing on Luigi again - especially since this is a really hilly course in parts - or whether I’m going to skip this one and work on getting a bike before Walnut Grove in July. There’s a friend at work who has a Giant TT bike that he’s considering lending me for the rest of the season, but he’s a bit shorter than I am so I need to check out the frame size to ensure that it will work for me. If not, I’m going to try a couple of other options (namely talking to people I know in the sport and doing a lot of pleading and begging). If those don’t pan out…well, at this point I haven’t made up my mind. I’m continuing to train as if I’m racing in two weeks, but those prospects are starting to dim. I just can’t bring myself to pay full price in the middle of the season for a TT bike when I know I can save several hundred dollars off of it in a couple of months; in my mind, it’s worth it not to race if I can save that kind of cash. I’ve already blown my budget for this sport this season; I can’t justify going into debt for the full package right now.

As a former semi-pro musician, I have a very controversial stance on the downloading of music - I completely support it as a marketing tool for artists who want to take control of their own lives, and believe that it has assisted in returning the scene to where it was in the late ’60s and early ’70s when bands like Led Zeppelin would record an entire album in two weeks and then tour for a year…the album was a promotional tool for the live show rather than what happened in the 90s where the single became king and bands were only good for 2-3 decent songs per album with the rest being crap and filler. I firmly believe that if you are a real musician, your venue is the live stage - if you can’t play live, you’re of no interest to me, personally, and I have a greatly diminished respect for ’studio bands’.

Having said that, if I download something that really impresses me, I support the artist and buy the disc. It’s kind of a ‘good dog, here’s a biscuit’.

I just wanted to throw that out as a bit of a caveat with regards to the first part of this post…

I downloaded Ivana Santilli’s new album “TO NY” two days ago, and had a chance to listen to it at work this morning while generating some construction drawings in CAD.

Holy crap.

Welcome back, Ivana. We missed you.

Cin and I have been huge, massive Ivana fans since her stint in Base Is Base years ago. Cin actually dragged me to see her play on her first solo tour for Brown, a little gig at Sonar in Gastown where we were two of maybe a hundred people in the audience, and spent most of the night standing directly in front of her, swaying, singing (and sweating - it was an amazingly hot night in that club) and loving the purity of expression that she puts forth live. Several live shows followed at Performance Works, the Jazz Fest…any time she hit town we were there.

Then, she put out her second solo album, and like the fickle little beeyatches we are, she lost us. I thought the album was boring, rote, a jazz/funk/r&b paint-by-number kit and couldn’t find a spark like The Sun Has Set, or Sun+Moon=Tomorrow. We clung to Brown, and consoled ourselves with a copy of Directions’ disc, Chantal Thompson’s band that opened for Ivana at Performance Works in Granville Island.

Over the next three-plus years, Ivana’s music retreated into the background - there were rumours of a musical meltdown in her life, moves between Toronto, New York,and London, a broken heart, all sorts of personal issues…the typical laundry list of conjecture and hyperbole that I learned to just tune out and ignore rather than take personally when we were in the scene.

Then, two days ago I noticed a tiny little blurb on the Net about Ivana’s new album. Cin and I both looked at each other, kind of puzzled that we hadn’t really heard anything about her for the last couple of years. Remembering our disappointment with Corduroy Boogie, I found and downloaded the album, and held my breath when I loaded it up this morning.

Ten bars into “Still Anymore”, she had me.

The second song, “Whateva U Want” had me looking at my iPod in disbelief.

Four songs in and I was emailing Cin…

Holy crap - I’m listening to the new Ivana Santilli album right now.

It’s good.

It’s really good.

It’s what the Remy Shand album kind of promised, but this one delivers. Total soul, R&B, very New York. Her voice is amazing on this album. Totally makes up for the crap last album.

It’s fabulous. Seriously. It’s amazing chill-nu-funksoul-NYC-night-vibe music. She channels Barry White in a couple of tunes, or Chef from South Park, I can’t decide which…

Yes, that last part was tongue in cheek. However, it gets my point across - this is a really mature album from her. Moving to NYC obviously agreed with her, and she’s written an album that not only plays like a letter to a lover, but plays like an open letter to a city that has helped her find herself again. She’s in love, and it’s obvious without being annoying, or saccharine. When she sings “…cause we’ll be making our sweet, sweet love, cause sweet love’s what you need”, it comes across as a genuine expression of passion, lust and love not only to a partner, but to her adopted city as well. This whole album is so consistently heartfelt that it’s a joy to listen to - more than once I found myself sitting at my desk with my eyes closed, relishing her breathy voice and beautifully layered harmonies…it was like nu-soul-porn. I guiltily felt like I needed a moment alone with Ivana’s voice in the washroom…

In a word, this is slinky music.

I really lost myself in this album - on a track called All Afternoon she sings “…roll up your sleeves cause it’s about to get real deep” and I caught myself grinning because vocally, there’s a nice little subtle tip of the hat to So Deep off of Brown, whether intentional or not - it’s two notes, but it’s like a warm embrace between Ivana and her fans, a little inside quip, a subtle tip of the hat to her past that comes off as sultry, slightly cheeky and not at all cloying or self-referencing. She’s found her way back to a sound that feels like her whereas I think the problem with Corduroy Boogie was that it was too much of a collaboration between her and several other songwriters - her voice was diluted and consequently so was the album. Here on TO NY, she’s writing purely her own style, from her own point of view on her adopted homes, and I think that’s the biggest compliment I can give her as one musician to another; when an artist can emote a certain style to the point where the listener feels like they’ve stumbled across a private note between two lovers, that’s an amazing accomplishment.

The second biggest compliment I can give her?

I’m going to find a copy of this album on the weekend. She deserves my money.

Welcome back Ivana. Now, come to Vancouver so we can give you some of that love back in person.

One of the interesting side effects of training is becoming more receptive to the signals your body sends you - learning to read the signs, like when it’s time to stretch out and go for a longer session than normal, and when it’s time to pull back or flush a session completely. Last Saturday was one of the top training days I’ve had since I started; yesterday was the diametric opposite.

I’d been feeling leg-heavy and sluggish for most of the day; grunting and groaning every time I had to get up from my desk and by the time I hit the weight room I knew it would be a day of low weight/increased reps, and a relaxed Zone 1 technique swim. The interesting thing is, whereas in the past I’d get really incensed and angry at having such a weak session then turn into a retard and force myself to do something completely unnatural and against my better judgement, this time I embraced it as a lesson to be learned - how to identify these types of low-energy ebbs and flows in my natural rhythms. Typically they tend to come in 4-5 days spurts, and it’s during times like these that I do a lot of cocooning at home, epsom salt baths, leg inversion, and I focus on what I’m eating rather than pushing through and risking a long-term injury or mental breakdown. Yesterday I took it easy through the weight session, did a slow 5 minute warmup in the pool and spent 10 minutes working on bi-lateral breathing drills, then a slow 5 minute cooldown 100m. Home to a nice low-key mellow dinner of marinated souvlaki chicken breast with rice, baked bean and steamed veggies, and then some leg massaging and inversions to stimulate the blood exchange in my legs. It just seems to be my legs that are suffering right now, although I’ve noticed that my lung capacity/cardiovascular system is feeling a bit handicapped right now as well. I have another brick scheduled for Saturday and I’ve promised myself that I won’t turn it into a breakthrough ride this time; next week is my hardest week in this block of training with four benchmark sessions in three days, so it’s to my advantage to follow the plan to the ‘T’ rather than improvising.

Hmph - triathlon as amateur psychological self-analysis tool…whodathunkit?

Esse Quam Videri.

Got home after yesterday’s run, and I just had nothing left in the tank. My legs felt like lead - I basically collapsed into bed and slept until 2:30am this morning, bagging my 45 minute hills ride and sleeping the sleep of the dead; I didn’t even eat dinner, so you know something’s amiss when that happens. Obviously I need to listen to my body a bit more…the surprising thing is that I don’t feel…bad…just worn out. I think I’m going to experiment with staggering my rest days rather than taking two off right after my weekly brick. I’m doing 2-A-Days every Wednesday, and a rest day afterwards rather than my second weight session in three days plus another endurance swim will probably increase my recovery rate and prevent any chance of burn-out.

Having said that, of course I’m going to the gym/pool after work today…’cause I’m a glutton for punishment. I remember at one time I said I wanted to feel that constant level of pain and discomfort that indicates my body is running at a higher level of training - mission accomplished. A lot of this really has to do with my elevated sleep debt, and continued poor nutrition. The first one I can correct instantly; the second one is a war I’ve been fighting for a decade and although this ship is starting to slowly turn, it’s going to be a while before I’m where I need to be mentally and emotionally with regards to food, and I’ve accepted that now. There are small victories daily, and that’s where I draw my strength.

The run was great…after the fact…Spanish Banks, early evening, blazing sun, fresh sea air…now I know why Eric advocates running at the shore break line where/when possible. I did try walking the break line but the sand was so soft and it was such a dramatic incline that I had a feeling I’d put too much stress on my ACL/MCL if I tried running at that angle for a prolonged period of time. I stuck to the gravel trail that runs parallel to the beach - it was a slow start and I really didn’t want to be there, but I sucked it up and made a five minute deal with Jakob. Just run for five minutes, then if I still feel like crap we’re going home. Somewhere in my subconscious he just slyly grinned and mouthed the word “sucker”.

40 minutes later I’d covered 5.14 KM at an average pace of 7:48 per KM, burning 652 kcalories in the process at a 148 avg. HR. I’d also walked seven of the 40 minutes, so that tells me that I’m probably close to breaking 35 minutes on my 5K time once I run straight for longer than 15-20 minutes at a time. It was a great feeling once I finished, but I hated it while I was doing it. My legs were tired from the start and I was feeling the effects of pushing it in the weight room and in the pool on Tuesday. However, this is what I wanted, so this is what I get.

Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.

Esse Quam Videri.

Last night’s weight and swim session was a benchmark for me. I know it wasn’t scheduled as a benchmark workout, but things are starting to come together fast and furious now…I’ve managed to prove to myself that I can bike 20K in under 45 minutes (on Luigi no less), and if I continue to increase my foot turnover and endurance, I should be able to break 35 minutes on a 5K within the next couple of weeks.

Last night I managed to prove to myself that I can swim 35 minutes (almost) non-stop now using TI, and my goal of 3×250 repeats with 30sec. of rest between is just another domino ready to fall. By the time Locarno comes around I should be working on mastering the 750 continuous swim for Walnut Grove - always keeping the next goal in front as the carrot.

The weight session was good - I’m steadily increasing weight, but I think I’m going to keep the weight stable now and focus on increasing reps instead. I don’t really want to add too much muscle bulk, just work with lean muscle mass instead. When I entered the water, my legs did feel heavy for the first 200M or so. Luckily all of my lanemates cleared out shortly after I arrived, so for 25 minutes or so I had the entire lane to myself and didn’t have to worry about staggering my starts between faster swimmers. I did some negative splits just from force of habit, but halfway through the session I realized that I was on track for 800M by the end of my session so I switched mentally to just churning through the laps, pausing at the end of each 25M for 5 seconds or so to move to the other side of the double-wide lane. Essentially once I re-learn to do a kick-flip, I should be able to start pounding out 100M repeats and eventually move to doing the 3×250 goal.

This is me, wearing a huge freakin’ smile on my face.

Run/bike 2-A-Day today. This is my hell day for the week so I will probably post again Thursday if I get a chance; if not I’ll do a post on today’s festivities and tomorrow’s swim on Friday night. I’m trying to set up an open water practice for Thursday night with Peter and a friend of Cin’s so keep your fingers crossed.

Esse Quam Videri.