Swimming, Biking, and Running

I continued to train this week for my Triathlon in April. I went to the Takoma Aquatic Center twice this week and swam a mile each time. My time went virtually unchanged to swim a mile: 45 minutes. One thing that could be affecting the time is that the Takoma Aquatic Center is a short pool, each length is only 25 yards. This means that I have to swim 35.5 laps (71 lengths) to swim a mile. Contrary to what I thought at first, I think it is harder to swim a mile when you have to turn around so many times and swim such a large amount of laps. I find myself wasting mental energy and focus on the amount of laps I have to do. The Wilson Aquatic Center on the other hand is 50 meters long, which equates to a 100 meter lap. There, I only have to do 16 laps to swim a mile. This is such a smaller and cleaner number. You don't even have to think about the number of laps because it is so few (compared to what I have to do at Takoma). I want to go back to the Wilson Aquatic Center sometime next week and try swimming a mile there and see if my time has improved. I believe that swimming in a lake or river would be so much more fun and easier in this regard than swimming laps in a pool. I can't wait til it warms up, there has to be some parts of the Potomac that are clean enough to swim in!

In addition to improving my time, I am also working on strengthening my lungs. When I am swimming with the freestyle stroke I find it really annoying that my natural tendency is to come up for air after every left arm stroke. I don't think the pros have to come for air that often. So yesterday when I was swimming I focused on doing twice as much as I normally do before coming up for air. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as difficult or uncomfortable as I thought it would be, but I could feel it. While doing the breast stroke (the easiest of the three strokes I use to swim a mile), I focused on doing the same thing and also found it not that difficult. Sometimes I would even do three strokes before coming up for air in a deliberate attempt to strengthen my lungs. I am hoping that strengthening my lungs will pay off in swimming and in biking and running.

I continue to bike to and from work every day. This requires a little bit of planning and preparation the night before but it is SOOOOOOOO worth it. My daily round trip for biking is about 26 miles now, but I can make it longer if I feel like biking longer. I am so happy that I can't remember the last time I rode the Metro to work. I do not like the Metro (I will have to write an entire blog post about that some other time), but on the bright side my dislike of the Metro is what first got me into biking! Some days I will take detours and explore new areas or trails, adding a few more miles to my weekly total. There are so many amazing places to bike around DC. I am already spending over ten hours a week on my bike (according to my GPS watch which I now always wear while biking), I think that when the weather warms up in another month or two I will want to just bike all day.

I still haven't started running again. I am a little bit afraid to. I am worried that my leg (IT band to be specific) will still not want me to run. I know I can walk though, so if it comes to that, I will just walk and walk and walk. I think I might go for a long walk today and just see how my leg feels. I am just as surprised as you that I can go for 100 mile bike rides, but am worried I might not be able to run a few miles. Running really is just that bad for your body (in my experience anyway). Someone who works at a running store told me that every stride you take running creates an impact of 6 times your body weight that must be absorbed somewhere; some people take in their knees, some in their ankles, others in their backs, but it has to go somewhere. When I was in physical therapy two years ago and I told the trainer I was training for a marathon when I hurt my leg, but that I still really wanted to run a marathon, he said, "Why do you people insist on running marathons? It is SO bad for your body!" He didn't mean to be mean, he was just referring to how runners kind of get addicted to running (it's hard to explain but it oddly really does happen, I've been there). I will have to make sure I can run/jog/walk some shorter distances though for my upcoming Triathlon.

Total miles biked this week: 144
Total miles swam this week: 2
Best mile swim time: 45 minutes (still working on that)

Rumpus in Bumpass

I signed up for a Triathlon this week called the 'Rumpus in Bumpass.' I am so glad it is called that--what a funny name! Michelle helped me find this Triathlon, and I signed up for it almost right away. Since I did a 100 mile bike ride a couple weeks ago, I have been trying to find something like this to keep myself working hard and have a goal in mind (such as a Triathlon to train for).

The Rumpus in Bumpass is pretty much the perfect Triathlon for me. It is on a Saturday (a HUGE plus, very hard to find), it is here in Virginia only 84 miles away, it is cheap (I signed up and got the early discount, and since it is a small event it is literally half the cost of other big name events).

I am signed up for the International distance Triathlon, aka the Olympic distance. I will start out by swimming 1500 meters (0.9 miles), biking 40 kilometers (25 miles), and run 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). My Triathlon is April 16th, which is on the first weekend of our Spring Break. I am so excited for this.

In addition to biking in to work and going for long rides on the weekends, I have started to go to indoor aquatic centers in DC near where I work to swim laps. I am going to try to go swimming twice a week in preparation for the Triathlon. I swam a mile yesterday, which is 1600 meters (a little over the distance in the Triathlon) and I timed myself. It took me 46 minutes. No world record there obviously, but I think I will be able to shave at least 5 or 10 minutes off of that over the next 2 months. I am least worried about the biking, since I usually bike more miles in my daily round trip commute to work than are in the Triathlon. The running part could be a challenge as I haven't been running at all lately, but I could always just walk it if I had to. But either way I am not really worried at all about how long it takes me to finish the Triathlon. This is my first one, and really I am just going to concentrate on finishing and having fun.

Total miles biked this week: 133
Total miles swam this week: 2

Anyone interested in joining me at the 'Rumpus in Bumpass?' Here is the link:

http://www.setupevents.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=event_detail&eventID=1689