New Season

Well, it's been a while. I took a bit of a holiday after Bala and as Summer turned into Winter, so my right shoulder turned into a complete mess. I have blamed the weather at Bala for a lot of it - five hours of only breathing to the right can't have helped matters - but I know myself well enough to know quite a lot has been an RSI flare from far too much tablet and smartphone use. I did very little swim training and even less running in Autumn, despite having booked two 5kms and a 10km (which became 5km). Admittedly they were "fun" runs (does that word ever apply to running?) which involved dressing up at Glow In The Park, Run In The Dark and the Man Utd Santa Run, but I was embarrassingly unfit at this point, struggling with stitch and pain in my Achilles as well as my shoulder. I was not put forward for grading at karate in November, either. To be honest I was relieved as I was definitely underperforming.

By Christmas, despite retraining myself into bilateral breathing whilst doing the 22 miles of the Aspire Challenge, I was virtually locked up and in a great deal of pain. I couldn't raise my arms over my head without stabbing pain in my arm, and I was crying into my goggles before completing a mile. I saw my physio, who started the process of unlocking the culprit - my sternocleidomastoid, which was referring pain all down my arm and linking up to the carpel tunnel inflammation already lurking. A team mate took pity on me and exchanged an acupuncture session for cake, lifting the unbearable constant headaches. I've never been so grateful to be stabbed. A few more sessions of physio and suddenly I was returning to swimming form; able to cope with USWIM's indoor sessions and start thinking about the 2016 season.

I dithered a lot and finally set my sights on Ullswater with the BLDSA, a seven-miler - it seems a logical next step after Bala and before Windermere. I've also decided to do Coniston again, but with BLDSA instead of Chillswim - though I loved the 2014 swim, I hear the event has got quite a lot bigger and I'm not a fan of huge groups. I like having my own kayaker. I've yet to book these or find a 'yakker for Ullswater, but I remain hopeful despite a bit of a flare-up right now caused by wearing a wetsuit at the USWIM opener this weekend. I set a new pool 5km PB recently - finally got it under 2hrs by a whisker! so I'm interested to see how it translates to open water.


In the rush of feeling better in January, I did an utterly stupid thing.

Seriously? I entered not just a half-marathon, but the half-marathon? The one that's so important in the family?

I am an idiot.

But I am taking it seriously. That's a lot of money to throw away on not training! I hope to re-crack 10km and beyond this week - I've got good support, great shoes, better kit, I track with Strava and I have an awesome playlist. I had entered a 10km in Blackpool, but it was cancelled so now I'm having a rematch with Great Manchester at the end of May. I hope that'll help me cope with the noise and hectic atmosphere at Great North, anyhow. I can't say I like running yet, but I am definitely becoming more competent and there are moments when it's quite pleasing. It's still more about sheer stubbornness than anything else, though. And I figure if I can conquer a half marathon I'll be in much better shape for karate. I worry about fitting the training in as I'm also in the middle of finding work, doing other work and selling the house, but I will just have to suck it up and get on with it.


Last but definitely not least, I finally figured out heian godan, pulled my head out of my arse and took my purple/white (4th kyu) grading along with Eldest last month. In all honesty I do think it was less punishing than the last one I watched, but I think my fitness has also improved so I was better able to pace myself. I was pretty satisfied with the technical aspects but I'm well aware my sparring needs a lot of work before I'm ready for brown belt. I'm hoping to take that towards the end of the year.


I don't do enough yoga and I haven't kayaked for ages. These things make me sad. On the happy side Eldest represented her school in the local swimming gala and both girls are going great at karate. We've booked Iron Kids again and I'm doing a whole weekend's kayak escort at Bala, too. So lots coming up - but I will be keeping my monthly date with the physio, that's for sure!

Janathon Week 3

 Third time's the charm?

The derailment continues. Thundersnow is apparently a thing, and it happened to us a week last Friday. Except here being here, it wasn't snow, it was 2ins of hail, which promptly went into the usual thaw-refreeze cycle. So running was right out because I don't have any ice skates and it was patchy enough to make YakTrax impractical. I had to wear hiking boots for the school run most of the next week as it then snowed on top of it. I also haven't completely shaken the horrible cold; it's actually come back and settled in my throat and lungs. Between the ice and that it's been hard to do more than I'd usually do, so I've spent some of the last week catching up on the remedial stretching and yoga I should be doing for my feet and hips. I'm trying to be ok with it - last year and the year before, ice and illness stopped me running completely. This year I'm viewing it as a blip in the schedule, not a dead loss.

However, we've had some really bright spots this weekend and that makes up for everything!

Friday 16th: 1hr 20 Yin Yoga: I'd been promising myself this session for a while but had to cut it short a bit as I was anxious about getting to school in bad weather, particularly since I'd promised to pick up one of the neighbour kids too.

Saturday 17th: Karate: Felt much better and spent some of my time working on doing combinations whilst sparring with the little ones - making sure I complete a block with a reverse punch, that kind of thing. Not doing terribly well with my kata, but it's early days yet.

Sunday 18th: The roads were scarily icy so I skipped USWIM with a heavy heart and worked through some Hatha for the core and spine.

Monday 19th: Too icy for running, too bored of yoga, so worked on my kata for a while. I forget how much hard work it is even when you do it really slowly!

Tuesday 20th: A real low with the head cold and weather: a 30s plank. Nice to know I can still pull that out of the bag whenever, though.

Wednesday 21st: Karate: hideous but fun; mostly due to a tough warm-up. Cheers, 8yo Cadet Leader.

Thursday 22nd: USWIM Blackburn: A really satisfying session; I feel like I'm improving every week and starting to get an actual feel for the water rather than wallowing through it. My timed 750m was 20s slower than last time but I'm not dissatisfied with that - different pool, different lane mates, and a cold. Still under 16min so I'll take it!

Friday 23rd: An overly busy day so just 10mins of Hatha for the feet - it turns out if you do Downward Dog with your feet braced against the wall, it hurts almost as much as Broken Toe pose.

Saturday 24th: On Thursday, Youngest (4yo) announced that she'd decided she wanted to be a Cadet Leader, which completely took me by surprise - Eldest has never shown any interest (she prefers not to be the centre of attention, she says). Sure enough she went and asked Sensei before class on Saturday, who took her at her word and let her try out. For that I'll be forever grateful, whatever Youngest decides in the future. So picture my tiny daughter at the front of a class of thirty-odd students, every single one older than her by a significant amount, all grades, lots of adults - and she took us all through the regular stretching routine with barely any help. Clear, loud enough without shouting, completely confident - I was absolutely blown away. So were we all. She got a huge round of applause afterwards and is looking forward to doing it all over again! She won't be able to take part in Cadet Leader classes for a while as she's just not physically big enough. I don't know if that'll put her off or give her focus: whatever happens, I hope she's understood that she has every right to give things a try.

Awarded by the whole class!

On Saturday afternoon lovely Rach came to visit as Eldest is due to take her ASA Level 7 Swimming Award soon and had asked for some help with her butterfly. It was a fairly quiet "kids' fun session", so there was much larking around on floats and trying to unglue Youngest from the wall (she's just come out of her armbands and lacks confidence), but I think some progress was made in both butterfly and freestyle.

 

Our Sunday lake swim deserves a post and photos all of it's own, so tune in later for "how I screwed up and still got a temp PB".

Janathon Week 2

Ah, the traditional Janathon set-back bites me on the arse again, but thankfully just a nibble so far. Lots on my mind this week, for various reasons - I've had some hibernating days, some down days, some shut-up-and-get-on-with-it days and a day feeling like I'd been hit in the face by a snow shovel thanks to a sinus infection. I've done more laundry than any one household should ever have to do. Still struggling with sleep - I have a really peculiar form of insomnia that I can't seem to find by Googling: I fall asleep fairly easily, have vivid dreams for ten minutes, then wake myself up somehow (often by pointing out a logical inconsistency within the dream). Then I'm wide awake for ages. It's so frustrating. It only used to happen when I went to bed too early - for me that's before midnight - and now it's any time I go to bed. I can't fathom it out. It leaves me very tired and prone to dozing off during the morning if I get even slightly comfortable. The cat sitting on my lap is fatal - one purr and I'm out for the count.

I have managed most of what I set out to do this week; I'm down one karate and one run, both due to the sinus infection. Having to sit out of karate whilst the girls were sparring was one of the most frustrating and tedious things I've done in ages. I couldn't do much more than curl up against the wall, pathetically mainline Strepsils, and hope I wasn't too cross-eyed to drive them home afterwards; but I still wanted to damn well get up there with my mitts and pads on and try to get the better of someone. Bah.

This week:
Fri 9th: 30mins Vinyasa Flow Yoga: Tadasana to Warrior 3 on physio's instructions to do more balancing.

Sat 10th: Karate: loads of circuit training and feeling unhappy with my kata (currently Heian Yondan). I really need to get on with the home study.

Sun 11th: USWIM Manchester: working hard and feeling good; included a timed 750m at 15.32 - not stellar but a big improvement for me. And lane leader for a while without getting my toes tapped! 1.6km and really missing that last half-hour the pool management have nicked off us :(

Mon 12th: Run: Roughly C25k wk5 powered by hate and spite - I SO wasn't in the mood but I figured I may as well make it as hard as possible so ran up a 10% hill into a headwind. Not quite the 5/5/5 min splits I was going for - made it in 3.5/4.5/15, so longer and harder than planned. I'll take it. Three years ago I was knackered just walking up that hill. 3 miles in total including the warm-up and walking breaks.

Tue 13th: 1hr Yin for runners, aaaaah. Much appreciated and nowhere near as sore as the first run.

Wed 14th: Death. Slept for a solid four hours during the day, so no run, and had to sit out of karate. Did ten minutes of Restorative Yoga before bed to get the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. And because Janathon.

Thu 15th: USWIM Blackburn: ye gods and little fishes, quite possibly the hardest set I've ever done - virtually all sprint work. Absolutely exhausting and yet, here I am, still alive, slightly faster and with almost-clear sinuses. Witchcraft, I tell you. 2.2km all told.

Tomorrow depends on the weather. I neeeeeed a good long session of yoga (and by that I mean 90mins) but I should also crowbar a run in there, and I'm in school all morning. We shall see.


The Christmas chocolate is all gone. This is probably a good thing.

Janathon Week 1

 I do love my enormous Tyr bag. It's so comfy to carry and I can take ALL the things.

I was in my girls' school this afternoon (I do volunteer reading help with a couple of classes) and overheard the Juniors' assembly. It was all about New Year's Resolutions and how it's ok to fail and try again and make a new resolution any time of the year. I thought that was a really nice thing to make clear to the kids early on and it was worth hearing the message myself, too.

My first week of Janathon hasn't been as badly derailed as last year's was. I have had a day being very off-colour when I'd planned to run, and a few mornings where I've just desperately needed to hibernate in the quiet. I've accrued quite the sleep-debt (if that is a real thing and not a myth), and trying to force my natural 10am-2am bodyclock back to 7am-12am has been torturous. The kids are shattered too, although gleeful to be back with their school and sports friends. We also had a disaster on Monday night when the washing machine took the final revenge and covered all three white karate gis in horrendous brown streaks, creating one panicked 2am order of a new machine (arrives Friday) and a sad little plea to our sensei for new gis. Which, stunningly, she managed to get hold of for us before our Wednesday class. How awesome is that! So washing kit has been a problem and the Christmas laundry backlog is laughing in my face.

However, I have managed to do something reasonable every day, which breaks down like this:

Thu 1st: 1hr Yin Yoga (supine focus)
Fri 2nd: 20mins Hatha Yoga (pre-bed relaxation)
Sat 3rd: Ran a mile with Eldest in 10m 49s
Sun 4th: USWIM Manchester, 2.6km of ALL THE DRILLS EVER OMG SO MUCH SINGLE-ARM
Mon 5th: 1hr Yin Yoga (evening practice)
Tue 6th: 1hr Yin Yoga (sthira sukham asanam/steadiness & sweetness)
Wed 7th: 1hr Karate (lots of fitness work, stances and kata with a little sparring)
Thu 8th: USWIM Blackburn, 1.6km of even more drills and some sprints. Much easier than Sunday, and although I'm rubbish at tracking these things, I do think my speed over 100m has improved again - below 2mins, don't think I've ever been there before.

There ought to be at least one more run in there, but eh, at least I did something and I feel better in the hips and back than I did last week, which can only be good. I plan to do some more challenging yoga over the next few days - any day I can do, I will do (because every day is too much pressure but I like it so much that I kick myself if it gets more than a couple of days between sessions), and hopefully at least two sessions each of run/swim/karate as appropriate. Next week I need to start reining in my post-Christmas chocolate munching. Cos it's nearly all gone.

In other news, I GOT A DRYROBE! This is ace and I can't wait for the next winter swim.

It's that time again...Janathon!

And we're back! Happy 2015, everyone, and if you haven't signed up for Janathon yet, hop to it. The rules have changed a little this year and you don't need to blog every day! Tweeting counts, hurrah.

Last year I was the last member of the family to succumb to the vomiting bug on New Year's Day, and thankfully it hasn't nabbed us this year (well - some of us had it in late Nov/early Dec and it could still hit us again, no chicken counting here!). I did feel kinda seedy after some enthusiastically alcoholic seeing in of the New Year and a whole lot of travelling over the last week, but a good session of Yin Yoga has sorted me right out. It's obvious I've been slacking, though, so my plan is to do yoga for the next few days to loosen myself up, then we're back into the usual round of Masters USWIM and karate five days a week, with yoga whenever I can fit it in. I saw my physio before Christmas to get my shonky hips and knees checked out, and it sounds like the usual hip flexor tightness and weakness on the left that's plagued me for years. So yin yoga and balance-based yoga need to feature highly this month. Also apparently my feet are "a bit wrong" so that'll need work too.

Plans for the year include but are not limited to:

- Swim a 10km event (mostly likely Bala two-way with the BLDSA, of which I'm now a member, and I'd love to do Kielder Water too) and probably a bunch of USWIM events

- Get my purple belt and be working towards purple/white

- Run a 10km event. Oh dear, what have I let myself in for with that! I have a rough plan to do it by the end of April. We'll see. I had a test run before xmas and I can still do a mile in about 9mins (albeit downhill), so that's something to build on.

- Support all our Team Bear members at Ironman UK - loads of our kids are doing the IronKids race, including my girls (and me, since Youngest has to be accompanied!); and wave pompoms for our Ironman nutters.

I'll probably end up doing a whole bunch of other stuff, and that's half the fun! In the meantime, have a horrible pun:

The teacher I like the most on YogaGlo tends to say "Yogi's choice" when there are multiple adjustments to a pose. So, I'm a Yogi. In Team Bear.

Clearly, I am Yogi Bear!

Time Passes

October was a bit of a random month, training-wise - a few hiccups of ill-health, a grand dose of "can't be arsed", some frustration, some generalised family chaos, and some useful gains, mostly in karate. November, despite bouts of illness, was much better.

 

 

 

 

Swimming

Completed my Aspire Challenge, a bit slower than I wanted to, but I finished it in style with three short laps of Salford Quays (1200m), in skins, at 10oC. And had a nice dose of some mixture of hypothermia and hypoglycemia to show for it; thank you to my Bears for taking care of me (read: stuffing me full of sugar and coffee til I stopped giggling and shaking).

USWIM Masters is back at Manchester Aquatics, with an extra session at Shadsworth, just down the road from me. Currently I'm performing reasonably well there (and having a lot of fun, actually - it's great not to miss my swimming friends through the winter!). My stroke feels cleaner and stronger despite not a lot of practice in October - thank you to Rach for the drill suggestions at the end of summer season, it does seem to have helped. I get off-days but overall things are consistent.

Victorian Polar was amazing fun - I made four costumes in the end and we looked AWESOME. Swam 200m in costume at 8oC and had a jolly nice, if painful, time in the water followed by all of the calories in the world ever.

Karate

This has been very challenging lately and that's where the majority of my energy has been going - I've been training three times a week plus working at home trying to nail down the three katas I needed to show at my next grading (heian shodan, heian nidan and heian sandan), and all the combinations required to go from yellow belt (7th kyu) to green belt (6th kyu). Technically I was wearing an orange belt but that's from the old grading system, it just wasn't worth changing it for a couple of months. I've learned how to bring side kicks into my sparring more and that seems to have improved things significantly. I'm quite good at those, but I know I need to work on my overall control and blocking. Learning three new kata in one go is not the normal way of things and I've spent a lot of time being cross with myself over kata and kihon (basics). I do think I've neglected kumite in my head at least and aside from 6th kyu kata, I want to focus on sparring in the new year so I can go to tournament.

We had the extraordinarily exciting opportunity to train with Shinji Nagaki Sensei - a world champion and 5th dan black belt! Eldest and I had a wonderful time taking an absolute master class in the basics (Youngest is a bit too young for this sort of thing right now, sadly, but at just 4y 4mo she is working her little butt off and she'll probably join us for seminars next year) and I felt a whole lot better about heian nidan in particular afterwards.

All three of us graded on 29th Nov.  Eldest and I are now green/6th kyu and Youngest impressed everyone with her concentration (over two hours of focus is a big ask when you're four!) and of course brought her orange belt/9th kyu home. I found it particularly hard - full of a cold, something feeling badly wrong and painful in my hip and being convinced I'd failed halfway through did not help, but like the Bears, the Tigers are brilliant support and I got past the pain. Definitely earned this one. Physio visit impending.

Running

Yeah...didn't do any of that stuff. To be honest I just didn't feel like it, then I didn't want to break anything before grading, and now my legs just feel rotten - everything's tight everywhere and I need to figure out what the cause is. Hence physio. I'm getting an awful lot of cramp whilst pool swimming and it was a real problem at grading - at one point I was stretched out in the box splits and two toes on my left foot were pointing at the ceiling all by themselves. I don't know if it's the cold or what but it needs dealing with. And when it's dealt with? Well. I have my target race picked out. It's not going away any time soon and it'll be there next year if it takes me that long to sort this out.

  

Yoga: I have an entire post about that coming up later. I can tell you're excited.

So...this happened.

  

Team Bear Tri

I seem to have been adopted! I'm still a little bemused and bowled over even a week or so later, partly by the sheer enormity of the digital hug that is Team Bear, and partly from an unsubtle dose of imposter syndrome. Patrick summed it up really well recently in this piece for H2Open: Am I A Proper Swimmer?. I think it's a feeling most people run into from time to time so I'm trying not to take it too seriously. Debates about the definition of "ultraswimmer" aside*, crossing Coniston has put me in a fairly small group of distance-capable swimmers, and I'm still getting my head around the reaction of people who don't swim a great deal. It still doesn't seem that far to me when I hang out with Windermere soloists and Channellists at USWIM.

Anyway, I suddenly have a zillion new and awesome people to follow on Twitter, lots of interesting conversations to have, enormous amounts of cheerleading and Kermit flailing to do, cake recipes to swap, and hopefully folks to duck drown throw into taunt bribe with cake introduce to open water. I still think it's unlikely I'll ever do a tri - the hills and narrow roads where I live are really quite intimidating for a newbie cyclist - but I'm content to be a long-distance swimmer, amateur runner and triathlon groupie! We (see, it's the royal we, now, cos we are Team Bear) will have some participants in IronManUK in Bolton next year, so I will almost certainly be hopping over the hill to provide screaming and cake. I'm definitely talented at that bit. My kids are even talking about doing the IronKids race and asking for Team Bear "Cub Strip". All very exciting.


Speaking of being in a small minority, this also happened:

Big thank you to Carl at @hypehairdarwen for the four hours of patience it takes to put that lot in!

This is the third time I've had mermaid greens put in, this time with some blues, and I'm as delighted as ever. The green is particularly long-lasting in my hair despite - or perhaps because of - the chlorine. You very rarely see greens and it does turn a few heads, but I guess the school run folks are used to my odd taste by now. There were many admiring noises at Salford Quays on Saturday, which was fun. So sad to be near the end of the season, although there are super-amazing Winter sessions to look forward to - including a Victorian themed dip in December for which I'm making a costume (or three, depending on how easy it is and how big the bribes are) modelled after an 1880s style outfit with bloomers and all. When I start making it I'll put some progress pics on my other blog Sea and Wood. I appear to have broken all the photos on there, bear with me.

This week(ish) I have:

- Brought my Aspire Challenge total up to 7.3 miles; a combination of working on my technique and bobbling about at Quays with friends - I have a rotten neckache from all the head-up breaststroke but it's been so worth it to just play in the water with no training pressure.

- Three sessions of karate in which I have my kicking legs back! I fell off the pontoon at Quays about five weeks ago and massively bruised my left leg to the point that Coniston was in doubt for a bit. I haven't been able to spar properly in a month or so, which has sucked in terms of fun, but I think it's made me more aware of how I use my punches and how much I depend on that left leg. All very educational.

- Been out for a run twice more, trying to balance the combination of disappointment that I'm not amazing right out of the box with surprise and pleasure that actually, I can run a mile without stopping and nearly two if I take a wee break for the vicious humpbacked bridge in the middle.

- Re-committed to a regular yoga practice. I did my very own little Julyathon and practiced every day, but it wasn't so easy to do with the kids off all Summer. Now I can go back to it, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I have a day off here and there. I would really, really rate YogaGlo for a home practice. For me it's well worth the subscription fee - much as I miss Jane's classes I now have access to lots of fantastic Yin-style classes by Felicia Tomasko which have undone a lot of my troubles. I also love David Harsharda Wagner's meditation classes.


So yeah...been a pretty darn good week for sports!


* I think it means the same as for running, ie anything further than marathon distance, which for swimmers is 6 mi/10k and that's the yardstick I judge myself by - but I also think that sea swims like EC, Triple Crown, Ocean's Seven etc deserve a special category of their own because the degree of difficulty is so much higher. Certain members of Team Bear loudly argue that the definition is "a bloody long way so shut up", and I'm going to leave it at that!

How Do I Sums?

Thank you to my dear husband for that post title tonight (who is well 'ard and ran 4 miles in hail this morning). The above is a good reason I avoid being lane leader - I really hate all the counting and mental maths! Happily the coach was on the ball tonight and keeping us in touch. He really does need to learn to write bigger.

A nice little 3.8km at USWIM Masters tonight - that's 2.4 miles or an Ironman distance,152 laps of a 25m pool. Lots of drills and some tough build sets - I really don't like those as my swimming speeds are basically "go" and "go a little bit faster". I don't have "easy", "moderate", "fast" and "very fast", which is what the coach was trying to get out of us. I had a moment through the first of those sets (after almost a mile of warm-up, drills, etc - THAT'S when we're expected to sprint?!) where I had a real "What the **** am I doing? I HATE swimming!" moment. Thankfully it passed very quickly and I settled back in. The upper lanes were quite busy so I stayed in the "not as fast" lane, as Dave diplomatically puts it, but I was in position 2 of 9 and eating the lane leader's bubbles the whole time. That was a good feeling; I know I couldn't keep up with the lady who was leading the last time I swam with her. I think my stroke is getting stronger...long way to go, though. I still feel terribly slow to myself, but perhaps I'm getting more efficient.

Looking forward to yoga for a good stretch tomorrow!

Train Like A Slayer

Anyone who knows me will probably know I am a fan of the mighty Joss Whedon and most of his works (the earlier stuff, anyway. Not even looked at Avengers and so forth yet). It occurred to me half-way through a 2hr, 4km+ set at USWIM Masters tonight that if the zombie apocalypse ever breaks out in Venice (or the less glamorous but still beautiful Lake District), then hey, I am totally your girl for the job. That made me laugh for a whole 400m!

It was a tough set, one of the toughest I've been through, and yet...I survived. And not only survived, but got boosted up a lane; probably due to the late arrival of a batch of newbies, rather than any superior speed on my behalf, though. I was in place five of seven, but when your lane-leader is a 15yo Channel aspirant (who is both awesome and gracious), that's a position worth being proud of. In fact, after these extra coaching sessions I was even - sometimes - able to keep up with Neil, which would have been totally out of reach last year. If there are any Janathon visitors who like running stats and graphs you should definitely check out his blog. I'm quite partial to his training minutes pie charts, myself. I may even make one at the end of Janathon! My thanks to Neil for keeping me in touch with the sets (new coach needs to write bigger on the boards) and for the odd sneaky draft ;-)

So yes, I think there has been an improvement. It's by no means solid yet - as usual, I could feel my form slipping badly when sprinting or getting tired. That's probably quite normal, but the gift I have from Dave's analysis is that when I feel something going wrong, I have a checklist of things to be mindful about. Are my elbows high? Is my hand entry correct? Is my left arm crossing inwards? Is my rotation equal on both sides? Now that I know what the right thing is, I can try to bring myself back to it far more than I could before. Re-analysis is scheduled for early March, which should be interesting!

Yoga tomorrow. Aaaaaah.

The Terrible,Horrible, No-Good Bloody Awful Swim

Just to prove that everything isn't always sunshine and progress, that was a bloody awful swim. It really hurt. Although I suppose given that it's hurting in my traps and lats, where it's supposed to if your stroke is ok, that is sort of alright. I just felt really frustrated - the lanes were crowded and busy, I had to keep stopping for Mr Superfast to lap me (not his fault at all but it irked me about my own lack of progress), and there was just SO much to think about. Is my left arm bent properly, are my hands deep enough, are my elbows high enough, am I getting enough power, why the hell am I out of breath, why's my rotation gone shonky...just way too much going on. No relaxing into it at all.

I gave up after 1700m; irritated, bored, and knowing I had stuff to do at home. Still, a mile is a mile and practice is practice. One day the corrected stroke will get easier. It might just take a while to build those lazy back muscles, though. :(

Karate tomorrow. Yay!

Perfection

When I was a teenager, I had a note pinned to my mirror: "If perfection could be attained, it would not be worth having." I still think that's true because if you were to become perfect at something it would be no fun any more. Half the fun is in the learning, and that's especially true when you're at the beginning of something - witness my joy at finally being able to switch neatly from a C to D and back again whilst playing Twinkle Twinkle during flute practice this evening. I played that little song LIKE A BOSS, man.

Adjusting faults when you're further down the path is harder, though. The coaching sessions with Dave have been well worth it because it's given me a clear focus on what needs fixing in my stroke - I don't need to worry overmuch about general rotation or my kick, which is nice. I do need to work hard on my hand entry, which I think is coming along ok - that was my big take-home from the session tonight, I really need to reach deeper and more sharply into the water than I have been doing. I know what that looks and feels like now, though, so I just need to stay on top of it. It's going to be weird to see how that works in a wetsuit, too.

The more difficult thing to correct will be my left arm. It is significantly less flexible in the shoulder, it seems (which is damned annoying because it's the right that got injured a few years ago), and my stroke tends to be too low at the elbow, too close to the centreline and not strong in the catch, so I'm losing power dramatically there. My right side is apparently fine, I must look hilarious moving down the pool in fits and starts. In terms of fixing it I really need to move to bilateral breathing now - I've been avoiding it long enough - and lots of drills, in particular single arm, doggy paddle and FQS. Yuck. The fact that these are the drills I absolutely hate is revealing.

It's interesting (to me, I appreciate everyone else is bored stiff) that in karate that strong right side is taking over excessively - in kumite I lead with my right leg WAY too much to the point it's a) predictable for my opponent and b) it's actually hurting my hip. So I think I need to have a chat with all my teachers and figure out how to balance myself.

My Socks? Consider Them Blown Off.

So yes, I received the video analysis from Dave on Sunday and it threw me into a bit of a mood because urrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, that left arm cross is nasty. Not to mention the whole "dear god, I look like a hippo" thing. Anyway, once I'd got over myself I had a good look and compared my stroke with some actual good swimmers - Jono von Hazel and Ian Thorpe, as well as the example Dave sent - and yes, as he says, I'm overreaching significantly. You can practically see the energy draining away and being wasted as my hand hits the water.

I wasn't expecting a lot at the pool tonight - it's often infested with numpties anyway and January is particularly bad for post-gym-bunnies lounging in the lanes. But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to have a well-behaved lane; people giving way or nodding thanks for moving over, nattering only on set breaks, etc. It meant I was able to get a mile's worth of 200m sets in, eight in total, focusing tightly on a high elbow and pulling hard on the catch. It's not a distance I usually measure over because I find it's very prone to interruption, and those 10s pauses really add up, but it was worth doing today even though I don't really have anything to compare it to directly. I averaged 4mins 20, which is not amazing but a significant bump for me when you add that up and compare it with my best mile time from last year.

That would be 39m 15s then, vs 34m 45s tonight.

Five and a half minutes better than last season. 

Even when you consider that last year's PB was open water, in a wetsuit, at an event; and tonight's time was in a pool with minute breaks between sets...I never bettered that PB in the pool at any point last season. In fact I got slower.

I need to replicate it. I need to go back and do a straight mile, no breaks, to see if it was a fluke, whether it was the resting, find out what the hell is going on. And whether I can sustain that over a mile without a rest, because it did feel like I was working a lot harder in the deep muscles of my back, chest and core. My BPM was higher for sure. I don't know if I'll get chance now before Sunday's second coaching session, but whatever happens, I'm excited to find out what happens after the in-depth session!

Shoshin

Shoshin is the concept of "beginner's mind" in Zen Buddhism - staying open to new ideas. It's an important one for me at the moment, particularly since I'm at the beginning of many new skills right now.

I've swum all my life - I don't remember a time I wasn't happy in the water - but it's one of those skills you can always, always improve on. And I'm more than aware I have plenty to improve on; my times alone will tell you that. Over the last few years I've trained a lot with USWIM, had a session with SwimSmooth, put in many hours alone and read a few books as well. I'm getting towards the point where I can feel where my imbalances are - I think I under-rotate my hip-shoulder axis (which makes me laugh because I'm told I over-rotate in karate); I have a tendency to look over my shoulder rather than keep my head straight when I breathe; that sort of thing. But it's very hard to tell what you're doing in the water and to that end I booked a couple of sessions with Dave Quatermain to have video analysis and some personalised critique.

First session was tonight - and lo, the videos have just dropped into my inbox, how's that for efficient! It was a very gentle hour, just what I needed after the collywobbles over Christmas. So no great distance or heart-pounding, terrifying sprint drills, but just enough to enjoy the water and regain my confidence. Being weak and shaky for days on end was no fun at all.

Deeply unflattering views of myself, there, so no way am I posting them! but ouch, that left arm cross is dreadful. Thought I'd fixed that :( That's the big obvious one, anyway. I await the criticism with trepidation. And an open mind...

Swimathon 2013

Well, that's that event down! Big thank you to everyone who sponsored me, much appreciated, and thumbs up to Darwen Leisure who were well-organised and made it all run smoothly. No report from Salford yesterday since it was cancelled due to cold weather (highly annoying - the dock owners were afraid of newbies getting into trouble, not that it was actually too cold for anyone to swim at all).On the bright side the cancellation meant I could take Eldest to a karate taster, which she loved and I secretly wanted to join in with. Maybe I'll get to do that over winter!

I completed the 5k in 2hrs, 4mins 2secs - drat! I was trying to get under two hours, but it's hardly surprising not to, given the amount of illness/busyness/general slacking that's been going on. However, the work I've put in over the winter - albeit patchy - has certainly paid off. When I did this distance at 18yo it took me 2hrs 20mins; admittedly in breaststroke. I really hadn't trained enough then either, and ended up with a horrible screw kick through tiredness which damaged my right knee. I didn't swim properly for many, many years after that.

The last time I was able to swim for a solid 2hrs was in September at Salford, and whilst I'm wary of comparing pool vs open water, I only completed 4k then (and got my Iron Fish, so "only 4km" is relative!). A whole km extra is enough to suggest I've sped up a fair bit. I didn't take proper split times, only looked at my watch when I could, but I also seem to have had a small negative split going on - my first couple of kilometres were slower than the last. At two miles I was at 1hr 21, which is 1min faster than the last time I made a note of it. So allowing for stoppages and so on, I seem to have maintained my speed since January. I'm presuming this is an effect of slightly better technique because I know my overall fitness has dipped significantly.

In terms of the swim itself, the first km was difficult, just getting to grips with being back in the water after so long (25oC was way too warm!). I didn't take my MP3 player, which I regretted at first but once I'd got into a rhythm I knew I'd just have knocked it out every time I pushed off (I made a lot of use of my long glide today to save energy!). I got lapped about six times by a very speedy young lad, but since he was only doing a mile and I knew he was a club swimmer, I was happy to let him go by. It was good to swim in a numpty-free zone - lane rage is something that's really put me off going lately.

I felt properly warmed up towards the first mile and the second was fairly fluid; I took the time to try to correct a nasty thumb-entry-first issue and that helped quite a bit. The third mile started well but I lost my focus a bit between 3.5-4.5km, when I had some neck pain on the right. I really must try to solve my over-turning problem - but thanks to all the winter training I was able to switch to breathing to the left or bilateral for a few laps to allow myself to rest. Completed the last half-km fairly quickly with much encouragement from the pool staff (who were probably just keen to get away, since I was the last in!), and now I have a shiny medal to show for it. Not sure what my ranking is yet, they don't all seem to be up.

All in all, it was a good experience - I've lost surprisingly little speed and hopefully got some oomph back to start working on dropping my two mile time down for Great North, which is seven weeks away. I have a training session booked at Windermere the weekend before, which I'm really excited about. On the other hand my hip is playing up no end, which isn't a problem for swimming but it does affect running, and to that end I have a session booked with Media City Physio this week to see if I can iron out some of my issues. Fingers crossed!

Swimming With The Black Dog

 

Writing and Running

The above goes to a really nice article about physical exercise and writing; the writers in it exercised because they are writers; a sedentary profession if ever there was one. I'm coming at it from the other direction; I got into endurance first at a young age and it does give me the perspective I need to not worry too much about how long it takes to write. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running has been on my to-read list for ages and I'm looking forward to diving in later this week.

Anyway. Sadly I have not been healthy over the last few weeks, again - I think I've had a permanent cold or throat infection since the end of January and the kids just keep bringing them home from school, joy. Because I've needed my voice so much for work I've had to let sport go for the time being - I'd already lost enough money due to snow cancellations. I ran my last classes this weekend, though, so bar the financial tie-up I'm a free agent now and no doubt the children will be delighted if I lose my voice again.

Not going swimming (or anything else) for a few weeks has, as ever, lead to a bunch of Bad Head Stuff - I'm sure you can imagine the way the black dog chases it's own tail. You're stuffed up and exhausted so you don't go, and the more you don't go the more your fitness falls off; you reach for the comfort food (ah, my old nemesis, the Chocolate Digestive); you feel more tired and well...why would you bother going? You won't be able to keep up and it'll really hurt the next day. The duvet's siren song gets louder than the call of the water even though you can't damn well sleep anyway. Oh, god, don't step on the scales. And then it snows so you can't get out at all.

Despite all that I hauled my carcass to USWIM Masters tonight and was pleasantly surprised to pull off 3.3km, including sprints (which I am rubbish at). My hypoxic breathing has improved, I didn't get cramp and I don't feel like toast. I do feel mentally muddled and could do with some external appraisal - I've learned so much about the technicalities this winter that I can't really feel what I'm doing any more. I noticed a horrible crossover in my stroke tonight, for example, and that's never been a problem before. I was getting quite down about it all the way through the session, and then coach Katie got us to do an open water simulation 600m at the end (that means you turn before the wall). She compared it to a big lap at Salford and suddenly everyone was very cheered up to realise that it's only 27 days to the beginning of the season. That was a huge lift and I came out feeling a lot better. I'm far less worried about Swimathon 5k at the end of April now. I don't think I'll have an issue completing it, though my time might not be as good as I'd hoped.

My rental wetsuit arrived last week and I have gloves and boots also. If the weather picks up a bit and it doesn't look too rough, I'm aiming for a quick dip in the North Sea next weekend. It looks about 6oC at the moment. I might only be in for ten minutes but I'm excited to give it a try!

March "Madness"

I get a fair bit of flak about my swimming, mostly about the cold but sometimes about the distance as well. I don't really care. You won't understand how amazing the water is - or the sense of achievement - unless you try it in the first place and even then it might not be the thing that turns you on to sport. Everyone's different, and I can't wait to get back in the Big Pool in eight weeks or so. I was gutted not to be able to get to the last polar session today (4.4oC!), particularly since it was so beautiful. But no more; I will be finished with Saturday work in three weeks' time and able to go whenever possible.

I've had around three weeks off sports over February, sadly - between the snow and ice, and the whole family catching a horrible head cold (which is still lingering for me, causing lots of headaches, poor sleep and general grottiness) I've missed a few Masters sessions at Aquatics. Not been for a run for ages, either. In the last week I've managed to go back, and also joined a Swimfit group locally so now I have two Masters level sessions a week for a total of 3hrs and around 5.5km if I work hard! I'm hoping to carry on going to the public session on a Tuesday for a straight distance swim as well. I'm plagued with cramp, though, which is doing my head in because I can't see a reason for it and I'm pretty worried it's going to dog me into the new season. I also tore the Mind swimming cap I'd been using since Great Manchester last year and haven't found a replacement - I've bought two now and they're too small, which in turn yanks my goggles off. Still, I've been working on bilateral breathing for the last few sessions and that is definitely improving; I need someone to check it though as I'm sure my turn to the left is pretty rubbish.

Distance for Feb: A pathetic 7.8km of pool swimming and nothing else, but let's hope that's the last of the rotten bugs for this year. If I can stay healthy I'd like to be pulling that distance on a weekly basis, if not more; I'm very aware Swimathon is practically on the doorstep and I still haven't managed to get enough time in to do a 4km, let alone 5km.

Downs and Ups

Just about sneaking a couple more Janathon sessions in!

I must admit, it's been a bit difficult over the last week or so. Snow-inflicted inactivity has stalled me in all sorts of directions. The desire to lose some weight leads to misery more often than not - sometimes I think weighing and measuring is the road to madness for me. It certainly leads to what I now recognise as "bad head stuff", anyway, which used to express itself as both low mood and a tendency to defiantly over-eat (as in "well, I'm never going to shift it, I may as well snarf down the entire bar of chocolate right now SO THERE!"). Since I more or less have the defiance under control, I'm left with low mood, which isn't a great mindset before a Masters session.

Sunday was a big pile of epic failbeans, then - I woke up fluey, poor progress with weight/measurement loss led to low mood and I wasn't hungry at lunchtime so didn't eat very much; certainly under 500cal all day. There were loads of new starters at Masters, which usually I welcome - there's nothing like sharing your enthusiasm with new people! - but it did lead to some fairly congested and cluttered lanes as everyone tried to sort out their speeds. Katie moved me up to Lane 3 (Lane 4 is the super-speedy types!) along with a few of the other folks I'd been lanemates with last year, but my attention was shot. I could barely wrap my head around what we were doing, let alone keep up. After a trying hour I bailed - it was obvious I wasn't in a good place mentally or physically. The coaches were both very sweet, though - I am dubious as to whether I'm ready for Lane 3 but it was nice of them to acknowledge I was still making progress no matter how crappy I felt that night. It's pretty much what got me out of the door tonight.

Dave had left extra training plans out "in case we got chance to swim in a public session during the week" and it was exactly what I needed tonight; I'm so glad I picked them up. I had a much better session - numpty-free! Actually it was amazing how quickly the lane cleared of, erm, head-up swimmers once me and my friend Mr RedShorts (I have no idea of his name, he's an older chap who swims a good fast breaststroke and is very good at lane ettiquette!) arrived. 300m warm up, 300m IM - which I switched to just freestyle/breaststroke alternates as it's NOT safe to do backstroke/butterfly with people who aren't good at sharing lanes! and then a 1950m endurance build, working up in 25m increments from 25m-300m. I was supposed to alternate easy and hard sets but I lost track of which were which and more or less did everything at medium pace. But it felt like flying anyway! Everything came together (yes, after the first mile...so predictable) and I was quite sad to find I'd completed the set and needed to do my 200m warm down.

Again, my tactic of "where would I be at this distance if I were at Salford?" worked tremendously well to get me through the tedium of a pool session. I just wish I could get my new cap to stretch a bit. It's bloody annoying. But I'm looking forward to getting out for a run on Thursday!

Don't Bore, Drill

The CBA Fairy nearly got me again tonight. It's down to -3oC here and pretty slippy underfoot. Smallest girl went for her taster session at preschool today so it's been top-full of mummy-angst - I stayed with her and she had a whale of a time (headed straight for the water trough: born a waterbaby, can't keep her away from it). Straight from there to school through the ice and back down the hill to Eldest's swimming lesson. Smallest was having lots of fun in the main pool with me until some other kid vomited. That meant everybody out, and the floor had to be raised and cleaned. It takes about 15mins to do, but we gave up waiting when Eldest finished her lesson. We were all pretty cold by then and even after tea I hadn't warmed up properly. I know how to take care of myself coming out of cold open water and never really get chilled afterwards, but when you've two little ones they (and the mediation of their inevitable arguments) come first. By the time I'm dressed I'm often frozen. Roll on Smallest being able to dress herself!

Nagging and Janathon got me to the pool tonight, late, but present and correct. Two laps in I was bored silly. I'm not getting on well with this new cap - can't hear my MP3 player properly, and it ran out of charge halfway through anyway - and the numpty-creep was starting. In desperation I decided I was just bored because I'd done a few endurance swims lately and what I needed was to drill until I was grateful for the boredom of a long swim. And it worked! Four warm-up plus six drill laps and I was ready to start an endurance-build mile. This is something Dave has us do sometimes (I have no idea if it has a proper name, that's just what I call it) and it is tough, but I feel like I maintain a better speed. You start by swimming 25m, then rest 15s, then swim 50m/rest 15s, and keep adding 25m each time til you hit 1650m. The last set is 275m. By that point I'd swum 1900m and the numpties were absolutely swarming, so I finished with a 100m cool-down and gave up in disgust at just under an hour. It's ok; as work-outs go it was short and not too boring; I know I worked my core and my mental arithmetic to boot, so it'll do til Sunday. Please, please let Masters run properly this Sunday!

The Can't Be Arsed Fairy

Have you met this evil little creature? It's the thing that grabs you at maybe 1-2km of a run or 20 laps, something like that, and you think "oh, I just can't be bothered with this". It often starts before you've even got your trainers on or hit the water - all the little things are wrong and you're fidgety with everything. Maybe you can't find a parking space at the pool or you've forgotten to charge your MP3 player. It's a bit brisker, or warmer, than you'd thought and you're under or overdressed. Perhaps you could do with a lip balm, or there's someone with a horrific screw kick splashing everyone as they go by. You start thinking about your homework, or a piece of writing, or planning a meal. Every little distraction builds and builds to the point where your energy and love of your sport is just sucked out of you. Heaven help you if you're already tired or achy from the previous day.

Well, the little swine got me at 14 laps today, probably a new record for running out of arsedness. Overtired from last night's run, I didn't want to get up in the first place. Didn't get on with the new swimming cap I'd bought. Not too bad for numpties, but I was well off my usual pace and not keeping up. I don't mind being lapped and giving way at Masters, where I know I'm not exactly top of the class (and besides, the beginner lane group have been together for three or four weeks now and we roughly know our speed order and who runs out of steam after an hour!), but it is disheartening and irritating in the public pool when you already feel rubbish. And yes, the lady with the terrible screw kick was there - she's not particularly slow for a breaststroker but one foot comes out of the water each time, so if you're behind her it makes a loud BOOM noise I can hear even over my MP3 player. Swimming in the opposite direction you get a gobful of water every time you go past. Add her to Mr Fast and Mr Thinks-He's-Fast and it was another set of niggles for the CBA Fairy to prod me with. Oh, and I forgot to eat anything before I started - having not had a snack after running last night. So a long, slow, boring mile it was.

I'm going to need to change my training schedule around a bit next weekend to allow for Masters...better try for the 5k again on Thursday and just a maintenance run on Saturday. Not sure what I'll swim on Tuesday - 2.5km would seem a sensible minimum.

Week 1 of Janathon Done

Maybe not, but I'm working on it...

Well, that's a week down and I'm knackered - how about you? In the last seven days I've done two runs of 2-3.5km each, swum 2km and 3.5km (and outperformed my last times at those distances significantly), and lifted a whole lot of heavy things, both for the sheer awesomeness of lifting heavy and as a specialist swimmer's routine. I've tracked my food every day even though I HATE doing so, and tried to keep it mostly on target - I've gone well over on two days, but they were my swimming days so there was at least some compensation for snaffling up the Christmas chocolates. I've lost a pound - I guess it would be more if it wasn't for that! I've gone up to Level 29 on Fitocracy, am ahead on both duels (though only just on one and that'll plummet tomorrow because running points are rubbish - it's all dependant on how hard I work at Masters on Sunday!), and ranking reasonably well in all the challenges I joined. Can't say fairer than that, really! So Janathon is doing great things for me. Whether I can stick to it when the duels are over, I don't know - a girl needs a night off! We'll see.