So yesterday 7/3/12 was my third year anniversary of when I started working out (7/3/09). Had a swim session in the morning and managed a 200 at 4:34 which is awesome time for me, that's 2:17 for a 100 X 2. Even the last 200 when I had already swam for an hour was sub-5 (4:59) which is still awesome for me at 2:30/100 instead of 3:00.
Coach got three swim aides (I don't know what the third one is, I used one Saturday and that one and another one Tuesday). One of them is what I like to call the Metronome. You put it around your waist and as you rotate it makes a clicking sound, but you more feel it than hear it in the water, and after using it in two sessions for about 500m total if that, I am rotating A LOT better and pretty consistently. It's like my body "gets it" now. I've believed throughout my life that I was an auditory learner... explain it to me and I'll learn the best. Or show it to me. But it turns out I'm a pretty good tactile learner - if I can feel it, I can recreate it. I love that toy :)
The second one I got to use for the first time Tuesday are things you snake your arm and hands through and they keep your wrist straight for the catch. Apparently I open my hands instead of keeping them cupped and I lose my catch on the right more so than on the left. I kept looking at my hands with "The Immobilizer" and trying to capture the feeling and the memory of what my arms, wrists, and hands feel and look like with them on, and I think they really helped also. So cool seeing video of me swimming. So it's all coming together. And I think I finally "get it" in that the hand movement is like a windmill. That's what kept going through my mind today, a windmill gliding through the water (which I guess was why my catch kept dropping), so if I windmill through the pool while keeping the position of The Immobilizer while imagining I have The Metronome on, I'm golden. There I was swimming and really enjoying myself, I couldn't keep the smile from my face as I was under the water. It is so much fun.
Also got video of me running through email (the video, not the running). Got the feedback of push hips forward and run light on my feet. I then asked how are you supposed to lean forward if you're pushing your hips out (because we're also told to lean forward), and was emailed back to lean from the ankles, not the hips. There I am, laying in bed, thinking about this, and the thought that kept coming to my mind was "that's a very interesting proposition." Can't wait to try it out on tonight's 8-miler. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the dynamics of leaning from the ankles as opposed to the hips.
Had lactate test tonight, warmup, then 30 minutes hard effort 90+ cadence broken into 10 then the recorded 20, I just lapped it. Average 146 with max 164. I average in the 130's in my rides. Then we had three more 5-minute intervals just to add some time to the workout. And I started thinking. I was under the impression I wasn't going hard enough on the bike. But I was just starting to start falling apart at the last three intervals, and the whole workout was just 1:20. No way I can keep that for 3 hours or more. 16.XX miles, no way I can keep that for 45, I was already starting to deteriorate rapidly. So maybe I physically DO suck that badly and I just need to put TITS (which, while not the greatest of acronyms, gives the great advice of Time In The Saddle). Maybe I'm NOT sandbagging and I got pacing right and maybe it'll just take longer to build myself. This made me lean a little bit more that maybe by ~133 heart rate average for 3:30+ hours rides IS a hard effort for me and I'm using RPE correctly. Now that I'm getting zones back from coach maybe I can use that to assuage my fears that I'm not going hard enough. But it was very interesting for me to notice that. I wasn't expecting to come to the realization that my 11.3 MPH on hills WAS the best I could do right now for 40+ miles.
Doing the loop for the second time Sunday with coaching groupmate, first time clipless with the compact crank, interesting to see the difference from the first time a few months ago.
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