Jackie D - Weeks 9 & 10

Weeks 9 & 10- starting Monday 13 November 2006

I have had a mini breakthrough on swimming this week! Not in the physical aspect (yet) but psychologically. Although I like swimming with my masters group, when I have to go alone it has really been something I just go and get through. This week I found that not only was I looking forward to my non- masters swimming workout but I really enjoyed it whilst doing it too! Like REALLY enjoyed it! Analysing this with hindsight I think this is because I am such a competent swimmer that I know I can do the distance and I know I can swim up and down for as long as required and so that keeps any motivation down. Well Mary’s workouts that have lots of stroke in them have turned that around. They are workouts that have butterfly in them and I am horrified to see that me, as a pretty good (though not fast) swimmer CAN’T do them. This may not sound very motivating but I can tell you it is! I now have something to aim for. Every time I go to the pool on my own I am going to make sure I do some fly and by this time next year I AM going to be able to do a 100m fly like written in some of these workouts. 25m I can do now (couldn’t 6 months ago!) and I have done 50m once but it wasn’t pretty at the end and I couldn’t do much after it!

My inlaws arrived on the 14th and stayed through to the 27th for the thanksgiving break. Lovely people as they are, they just have no clue about triathlons and the importance of consistent training etc. Consequently to minimise disruption to their visit and so I didn’t push it in their face all the time, for the most part where I could I got up and did my workouts early before they were up. This was hard as we were up playing cribbage way past my normal bed time so I got more and more tired as the days went on. I need my sleep - 8 hours at least and I wasn’t getting it.

I did have to walk to dog though so managed to squeeze some runs in doing that whilst they went shopping (I HATE shopping - I must be one of the few girls who do!). I know they think I am completely mad getting up to exercise. However, although I found it difficult a couple of times I am feeling very pleased with myself because I did everything on my schedule with a bit of juggling. Good came out of this because I started teaching myself that it is OK to juggle things around. I have been (and still am) a bit neurotic about doing the schedule as written so making myself do this I am sure has been good for me. Mary said at the last Ironman meeting not to worry about missing a workout but that doesn’t work with me!

We went up to Toronto for the weekend after Thanksgiving and having my weekends light on the training really helped me here. I got up early on the Friday and rode outside as soon as it was light (brrrr - cold) before we left on Friday. Saturday is my day off and then I got up early on Sunday for a run. The owner of the B and B we were staying at caught me on the way out of the door. Turns out she runs and she explained a lovely 10k route to me. I was a little nervous about running on my own in a city I didn’t know well but with her advice all that worry disappeared and I had a lovely time. I am not a city person and I can’t begin to explain the relief and joy it was to run that morning, heading out into the more spacious suburbs. I could have gone on forever!