This is not a sex toy...

No really, it's not!!

It's the Brookstone IGallup, a core exercise machine. I've had my eye on this baby for some time and now that it is majorly on sale I bought one. It's a lot like riding a horse (or so I'm told) and it has different settings so you can go from a trot to a walk to a gallup. You won't get knocked off or knocked up on this machine, but you really do work your core muscles trying to stabilize yourself. It's a painless way to get in some extra core work while watching TV.

Outside of getting the IGallup, week 9 has been a tough week. I've fallen into the pattern of swimming well on Tues, Thurs, Fri, and on my weekendend long swim, and swimming poorly on Mon and Wed (for whatever reason, those are the days my body is most tired). Well, this week began by following the familiar pattern. Except when it came time for my long swim on Saturday, I was so tired that I almost felt sick. For the first time, I was not able to even make it through the swim, and I got out after 9,000 yds, instead of 12,000. I then slept 11 hours, rested most of the day today, and now I'm starting to feel better.

At my ripe, old age of 27, I think it's time I started paying more attention to muscle recovery. My friend Matt has gotten me hooked on drinking chocolate milk immediately after practice (supposedly it has the perfect mixture of milk protein and carbs that your muscles need to refuel, but any excuse to drink chocolate milk, right?) Now I'm going to step it up a notch. I'm trying something called Muscle Milk light, which has only 160 calories but a whopping 20g of protein.
I'm also going to try to stretch every night, in hopes that I may one day be able to touch my ankles.

Week 8:
Mon: swim 4200 yds, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 4900, 10 min core exercise machine
Wed: swim 4800, 10 min core exercise machine
Thurs: swim 4200, 40 min abs
Fri: swim 3200, run 3 mi
Sat: swim 9100
Sun: rest
Total: total swim 30,500, run 3 mi 100 min abs/core work.

Channel Foremothers

This week I began rereading Marcia Cleaveland's Dover Solo, her memoir from her 1994 Channel crossing. I can't help but be impressed by the immense amount of planning and preparation that she put into her swim. Marcia plotted out every detail of her crossing and analyzed everything that could go wrong. She listed each and every component of a successful channel crossing and tackled each one of these in her training. Her list was as follows (p. 24):






"- Being prepared to swim in 55-60 degree Fahrenheit (F) salt water for over 14 hours.
- Acquiring the necessary swim endurance.
- Researching the swim.
- Swimming in challenging weather conditions (waves and swells, wind and fog).
- Swimming with marine life (jellyfish, seaweed, fish, etc.) and through jetsam and flotsom. (Jetsam is man-made debris, flotsam is organic matter such as seaweed.)
- Swimming at night.
- Swimming across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
- Dealing with mental stress.
- Dealing with nausea while swimming.
- Selecting a boat pilot.
- Inhaling exhaust fumes from a boat while swimming and not getting sick.
- Practicing being fed while treading water, with emphasis on simplicity and speed.
- Keeping track of what works (and what doesn't work).
- Testing and practicing with the equipment.
- Practice, practice, practice!"

Juxtapose this with my mom's preparation for her channel swim, in 1999:
- Have a few too many Coronas while drinking with friends. Agree to swim the English Channel, which suddenly seems like a good idea.
- Wake up the next day and think "Oh crap! Did I agree to do what I think I did?"
- Resume swimming crazy amounts of yardage, as per usual.
- As the date gets closer, realize that a 90 degree swimming pool in Miami is not the ideal training condition. Take some trips to get in some cold water training.
- Arrive in Dover. Get bored waiting around. Take some time to see the sights, instead of resting up.
- Swim across the English Channel. Clock the fastest time of the year and win a Rolex watch!
- Drink a few more Coronas. Repeat step one, agreeing to some other crazy long swim.

My mom and me, a year or so before her channel swim.

So, yes, all sorts of personality types swim the channel. I think I will fall somewhere in the middle of these extremes (not quite type A personality...not type B...Maybe A-? B+?)

Week 7 of training for me went like this:
Mon: swim 5200 yds, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 4800
Wed: swim 4900
Thurs: swim 3100
Fri: swim 3300, 40 min abs
Sat: swim 12, 200
Sun: run/walk 7 mi, 15 min core exercises

Total: swim 33,500 yds, run/walk 7 mi, 8 min abs, 15 min core exercises

Cross training

I want to take this opportunity to commend Karen on her excellent cross training this week. Karen participated in the Krispy Kreme challenge, a prestigious event in which competitors must run 2 mi, eat 12 donuts, and then run 2 more miles.








As you can see from the photos, Karen put up a valiant effort. She ran 2 miles, ate 6 of the donuts, and ran the final 2 miles, all in 53 minutes. Way to go! With proper training, I have no doubt that next year you will eat all 12 donuts.

Week 6 for me went as follows:

Mon: swim 3200, 40 min abs
Tues: swim 4400, run 3 mi
Wed: swim3700
Thurs: swim 4500
Fri: swim 2600
Sat: run 7 mi
Sun: swim 6600

Total: swim 25,000 yds, run 10 mi, 40 min abs

Go DAMA!

I mentioned last week that while I was slaving away doing my weekly long swim, most of my usual swim buddies were at a meet in Charlotte. This meet was the USMS state championships and DAMA got 2nd place!!

Here's a picture of my husband Jason swimming his 50yd fly.

While he wasn't invited to the meet, here is a picture of my dog Sneakers swimming the 50 yd dog paddle. Isn't he handsome? Like father like son!

Here's how week 5 went for me:
Mon: swim 3,000 yds
Tues: swim 4,200
Wed: swim 3,900, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4,200
Fri: swim 2700, 40 min abs
Sat: run 7 mi
Sun: swim 11,000 run 3 mi
Total: swim 29,000 yds, run 10 mi, 80 min abs

I had lots of company during my long swim today, for which I was very grateful. Several people were there for parts of the swim, but Fillipo was there for 10,000 yds and Karen was there for the whole 11,000! Now while I like to fancy myself a badass, I have to state for the record that Karen is a super DUPER bad ass. While I swam the entirity of the 11K freestyle, Karen swam most of it IM (on the same interval as me, mind you).

On to week 6!

Preview

Under the weather

This week was a very exciting one for us folks in Durham...we got snow! And enough snow to stick. We don't get snow here very often, so when we do everything shuts down. I had a holiday, a snow day, a teacher work day, and I took a sick day this week, so I only worked on Friday! Since I had a terrible cold, which on Thursday morphed into a fever, I was glad for the extra rest.

There was much frolicking in the snow, and general merriment about the extra time off:

So with my cold and the snow, I didn't get as much swimming in as I wanted to, but week four was still pretty productive:

Week 4:
Mon: swim 4500 yds
Tues: run 6 mi
Wed: swim 4300, 40 min abs
Thurs: fever - rest
Fri: swim 3200
Sat: swim 2500, 40 min abs
Sun: swim, 11,000, run 4 mi

Total:
swim 25,500 yds
run 10 mi
80 min abs

On Sunday, my usual swim buddies were at a meet in Charlotte, so I ventured to the Dark Side (Tar Heel territory) to swim at a new pool in Chapel Hill, with my friend Filippo. The pool is very fancy and new, and worth the $6 it costs to swim there.

We ended up doing 110 x 100 yds on 1:30, which ended up being a lot harder that the 100 x 100yds that we did on New Years on the same interval. I believe that the reason for this was threefold: 1) I swam 10% farther today 2) I swam slightly faster (averaging about a 1:18 pace instead of a 1:20 pace) 3) and I had the lane to myself, so I didn't get to draft off of Karen for half of the workout.

After practice, I was starving and grabbed some dinner at the hot bar at whole foods. Now, while I have been trying to lose weight in general (I've lost 5 lbs since New Years! woot woot), I pretty much eat whatever I want after long swims because I figure my body needs the nourishment. I gathered what I wanted from the hot bar and then looked down at my plate with alarm - I had filled it with mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, lakte (potato pancakes) and a few french fries. That's a crazy amount of carbs! Feeling that I needed to balance things out a bit, I added a couple of pieces of bacon as well as a pile of broccoli.
I chose to interpret this carb frenzy as my body's signal that my glycogen supply was zilch and that it wanted it replaced right away.

Rest Week

Well all this swimming has finally caught up with me. My arms have gone from bags of sand, to bricks, to lead, to uranium, to eka-radon (a hypothetical element that supposedly is the heaviest thing possible). Well, you get the picture.

I was planning on making this a relative rest week, which I embraced happily. With no long swim this week and 2 days off of swimming in a row, my arms feel much better! Unfortunately, I now have a cold.

On another note, I found another race that I want to do this year. It's a 10 mile swim in a very scenic lake in Vermont. It looks very pretty, but cold: http://www.kingdomaquafest.com/

Week 3:
Mon: swim 4200 yds, abs
Tues: swim 4500
Wed: swim 4000, abs
Thurs: swim 4000, run 5 mi
Fri: rest
Sat: run 7 mi
Sun: swim 4300, abs

Total: swim 21,000 yds
run 12 mi
2 hrs abs

Sweet nectar of the gods

For the New Year, Jason and I began modified version of the flat belly diet, which, to my horror, requires the elimination of soda. But we're doing a modified version of the diet, so there's no need to go crazy, right? I figure it's OK to have a diet soda or two, as long as I drink all the water that I need first. So my new rule is no diet soda until I've had 64 oz of water. After I drink my water, I'll have a diet soda or two in the afternoon and then will usually drink another 32 oz of water at swim practice.

So in the past week I've gone from about 7 diet cokes a day to one or two, and from very little water to about 12 glasses. At first, it was very hard for me to cut back on the sweet nectar of the gods. The first day I was tired, grumpy, and in general much less charming than usual (see exhibit a).

exhibit a

The good thing is, it made sticking to our diet much easier. When you break your leg, you no longer notice a paper cut. Similarly, when you drastically cut back on such a crisp, refreshing beverage, you miss it too much to notice that you miss junk food too.

After the first few days things got much much easier. If fact, I felt great. I told Jason that I felt like I was on some wonderful drug. "Yes," the smart ass replied, "the drug is called hydration."

Anyway, fully hydrated and properly nourished, week 2 of English Channel training went as follows:

Mon: swim 4200, do 30 min of abs work
Tues: swim 4200
Wed: swim 3100
Thurs: swim 3700, 30 min abs
Fri: swim 2600, run 5 mi
Sat: Run 7 mi
Sun: Swim 10,000

Total: swim 28,000, run 12 mi, 1 hr of abs