PT v1

Had my first physical therapy appt this morning. It was awesome - not exactly fun, but really great to know that whatever is going on with my knee is not serious. The woman thinks that I strained by ATL band - or the way she explained it is actually that I built a lot of muscle there and the band has gotten so strong that it's basically pulling my kneecap out of place. Which is, when you think about it, kind cool and kind of gross at the same time.

So here's what I have to do:

3 reps of 1min stretches of my iliotibial band using a towel or a dog leash to pull my leg across my body and down.

15 leg lifts (lying on my back, left knee raised, lift right leg out straight and hold for 5 secs); switch sides, repeat.

Lie sideways on a foam roller and basically massage the tissue in my outer thigh by rolling up and down. This part sucks because a) it demands that I go to the gym and b) it hurts.

Then I have to ice as much as humanally possible. Must invest in theraputic frozen foods and label appropriately.

My friend is now trying to talk me into doing a half marathon in June. I feel tempted, which is hilarious considering that I am basically bench warming at the moment. We'll see how this takes. Back in the pool tonight.

boo-yay with the flip turns

Swim: 45 minutes, warm-up 100 meters; 50 pull; 5x100 w/ 1.5 m rest intervals; 6x50 working on breathing and form; 100 cool down

Oh my friends - spring is coming. I know because I wake up in the morning and think, "oh fantastic. it's so beautiful" a marked change from February where I usually woke up thinking, "f*&% off, world."

So I'm not going to lie to you - in all this spring fevor - I rocked the pool the last night. When I was there on Monday, I talked to the masters swim coach and he suggested that to join the team practices (a grueling 90 minutes of coached drill swimming), I should be able to swim about 10x100's -- basically back to back. This was good to know (in a scary way) because now I have a goal. Having found out on Monday that my first 100 wasn't all that scary, I was detirmined to try a couple of them. So I did.

Here's the best thing about swimming 100's: They much easier to count. In fact, I think you could say that I'm acutely aware of where I am as I come fighting down home stretch on my last 25 - trying to hold on to breathing every other stroke.

Right around 7:30 two other girls jumped in my lane (bring us to a total of 4) - I took one look at these people and was like, "oh for god's sake". One was wearing a bikini. The other one was wearing a bug-green neon bathsuit and had about four feet of hair and no swim cap. Well, that will teach me. Bikini swam breast stroke, but the neon green suit got in and just started ripping the lane apart. No breaks. No rests. Just flip turn after flip turn - and she was fast. So I thought about something I had read about on another triathlete's blog - it's about how you can draft on faster swimmers, which challenges you to keep up, but at the same time, makes it easier to try another pace because you get a pull by being in their wake. So she came through, flipping and pushing off in about 3 seconds, I dropped in behind her and went along for the ride. It was great. I kept my fingers in the bubble trail from her kick and we went zipping down to the other end of the pool and back again, then up and back. Then I dropped out for a lap to rest and when she came back through, hopped on again. It was a fantastic workout. It was also a lot of fun (for me anyway - I bet she never noticed). Before I even knew it the master's team was standing on the deck and it was 8:00pm.

I was so happy with my workout (and kind of sad it was over), so I thought I would walk down to the store and get a frozen yogurt to celebrate. I think I ended up with soft serve ice cream, but it was delicious and made me feel - wandering back to my car still wearing my swimming suit under my fleece - that it was really really spring.

DCAC menance

Monday: Swim 40 minutes

So I have backed off significantly on the training side. It's totally killing me, but my knee is *still* hurting and it's so early in the season that I know if I don't let it heal it will dog me until the fall. Besides, MD yelled at me for pushing myself too hard and I was all petulant about it, ("FINE. I WON'T train. So there. stomp stomp stomp.") But I had to admit she was right. I've got nothing to gain from ignoring it.

So it's been all about the pool lately. I honestly have no idea how far I went on Monday. It was a great great swim. But I got there late - around 7:20 - and the Master's swim team has practice from 8 to 9:30, so around 7:45 I'm working through my laps and I look up to see that there are all these people standing, fully dressed at the other end of the pool, watching everyone in the lanes. Every time I did a 50 and got back to the other side, there were more of them. As it ticked closer and closer to 8, the clothing started disappearing until there was this wall of 40 beautifully scultped, toned gorgeous people holding their googles and standing with their arms crossed, waiting. It was the most unnerving thing that has happened to me in weeks. In some ways I was grateful for it because it made me incredibly conscious of my form (and trying not to flail in the water), on the other hand it was bad because I was so busy concentrating on looking like I knew I was I was doing that I have absolutely no idea how many laps I swam. I think it was a lot. But the other really good thing is that I swam my first 100! I went slowly and methodically and it was actually pretty easy. I think I'm going to try to do a few sets of those on Wednesday - and when I work up to about ten sets then maybe I'll join the masters team so I can can be the one looking sculpted and bored at the other end of the pool, waiting for the novices to clear the lanes.

1/2 way there!

Swim: 100 free warmup; 600 easy free (50 meter laps); 100 pull; 100 cool down

What a night in the pool!

I was so panicky about my knee all day that I decided that the best thing I could do for it was stay off it and do something low impact. So I hopped in the pool to splash around a little bit and keep up the appearance that I was working (note to self - the pool clears out after 7 on thursdays). Anyway, I wanted to try this out this theory that I could swim 50 meters if I worked on my breathing on the way down, did a flip turn and allowed myself to breath every stroke on the way back. And low and behold - I can! I'm not going to say that it was a stunning night, but I am so much stronger than I was before and tonight, almost accidentally, I swam over 1/2 of the distance of the Irongirl and I thought to myself, "hey - this might not kill me."

I also have this crazy idea that I should get a little folding bike and start commuting to work. I need to lay off the clipless petals until I figure this knee thing out and I would love to save 400 bucks a month on that damn car. Plus I think those little folding bikes are wicked cute. I could be a green earth hippie, while still working for the utility version of Exxon Mobile. Is there cosmic balance in this? I feel that's almost like a mini revolution right there.

oh no

this is not good at all.

Have had a great week so far - went for a great run last night - 25 minutes at 5.3 pace. My first little adventure with a heart rate monitor confirmed what I have suspected, ie. what I've been considering as "endurance building" is way outside my target HR thresholds for real endurance training. To keep my HR under 155 I had to back off significantly - I started at 5.3, then slowly backed out the hill I usually set for myself, then around minute 21 I knocked 0.1 off my pace to get my rates back down. It was amazing how much I could control it - just by thinking about my form and breathing. Anyway, it was a great run. When I stopped and I noticed that my knee was hurting. So I stretched and then got up to go change. By that point my knee was in full lock down mode and I could barely walk. I limped back to the garage, went home and spent the rest of the night sitting in bed with frozon mango slices on it.

Right now I can feel it aching - it doesn't hurt exactly - it feels like inflamation or soreness. It's right on the outside of my left knee (my problem child). What's interesting is that my knee isn't swollen or hot to the touch. It just feels super tender and I'm favoring it when I walk. I don't know what to do. My officemate, Laura, said it sounded like her sister's running injury when she strained her ATL (?) band on the outside of her leg (upper thigh), which pulls on your knee and results in these symptoms. I don't know. I will put a call into Dr. Younger Sister and see what I should do. Maybe a physical therapist. I cannot get hurt. I refuse to get hurt.

sink or swim

Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: Swim, 30-35 minutes - 10 X50 five sec RI; 100 meters with kickboard; 100 with pull buoys; 5 X50 free style trying to concentrate on form

Oh sigh. The swim was not good. Which is not to say it was bad, but it was one of those nights where I felt heavy and sluggish in the water. Maybe that had to do with eating late - or having coffee late - but I thought I was going to sink to the bottom of the pool and have to rescued by the extremely bored and inattentive life guard. The short rest intervals were brutal. I full confess to cheating after the first 15o meters.

I was actually looking at the clock and giving myself five second between sets and it was so hard. I just need to keep swimming it and work on my flip turns so I can work up my endurance. I wish I wish I wish I had a fifty meter pool to practice in. But - I did get it done and for some reason everyone was really friendly last night. I met a cool girl called Erin who was training for the DC tri as well, and another guy who had his swim cap from a race last year on. I have this feeling that practically everyone in that pool was training. I mean - who else really swims this early in March but the triathletes?
Incidentally - note to self: do not swim next to the wall. If you swim next to the wall you get knocked around a lot. Will be back in the pool on Thursday to try to kick a little more ass (or really, any at all).

But in the good news report -- My heart monitor is here! I wore it last night while I was making cookies and listening to the primary returns (exciting night). Apparenlty my resting heart rate is about 83. Next step - take it to spin class and see what we can do.

Zoot suit

A quick seperate note to tell my gentle readers that my official race suit arrived in the mail on Friday. It's a special present to myself because it's bonus season, but also because I feel like if I nail it up in my closet, it will give me something to apire to. It is a hot little piece of aerodynamic engineering. It does not, despite its best efforts, look good on me at the moment. But I think that if I train well and I'm strong and ready to go on race day - it will look hot. Not to mention giving everyone around me the misleading impression that I know what I'm doing. Also, as a sidenote, I just want to say that it's nearly impossible to get on. Granted, I was definitively drunk the first time I tried to get into it - which was probably a mistake. But when I looked at it again later, I realized that it's a relatively complicated piece of clothing. It has this built in sports bra and a zipper that goes all the way from my belly buttom to my neck, so you have to step through the sports bra, without putting your foot on the zipper and then get your leg into the right part of the shorts and then shimmy into it - all without falling over or ripping anything. And trying to get out of it again gave me bruises. But - not the point. It's grey and had hot pink lines and once I get my camera back from the big C, I will post a hot picture of it.

I made it through February!

Friday: Running - sprint descents -6,4,2,1 at 5.6 pace with 90 seconds rests at 5.0
Saturday: Spin class 1.5 hours; 10 min transition run
Sunday: Bike, Hains Point, 30 minutes, 6.5 miles - easy pace.

What a weekend. Seriously - I need to back off or I'm going to make myself sick. After my swim on Thursday I was trying to figure out how I could fit everything in so I decided to try doing my faster run on Friday and then getting up early for spin class on Saturday morning. The run on friday went fantastically. I tried doing decending intervals - which I read about in my tri book. You do a ladder down - so you run 5 minutes hard, then rest for two, then run four minutes hard, rest for two and so on. If you want then you can build back up again. It works like a charm - I shot my heart rate right up and then got to test my recovery. It's actually pretty good. I was really pleased. The problem was that then I went home to have dinner with my cousins and because I was at the gym late, I was rushing and didn't have time to eat... and then we drank three bottles of wine. I spent all night having dream arguments with myself about why I couldn't get up to go to spin class. But, shockingly, when 8:00 am came, I woke up like a lamb and got in the car.

Spin class, however, was another beast all together. I accidently wandered in to Cycle Challenge, which not only is 45 minutes longer then my usual class (bring it to a whopping 90 minutes of pain and agony), but also happened to be a day when they were testing recovery... by not giving you any. Between the intensity and the better part of the bottle of wine I had drunk the night before, I thought I was going to throw up. I crawled out of there at 11:00 am and because I knew I had to work it in somewhere, managed to limp through a transition run. I was so foggy after class that I'm not totally sure how I got home. I was inhaling calories too - a banana, an apple, a muffin - and then, when I made it home, immediately made myself an enormous egg, cheese and avocado sandwich and fell asleep for an hour. Crazy tired.

Saturday night I went to a party and could barely even stand to be in the same room as alcohol. I drank seltzer water and went to bed by one in the morning - which is practically saint-like. I was trying to take today (Sunday) easy, so I went to the paint store, but on my way home, I had this idea that I should go check out the race course for the DC triathlon because I had been telling people about it in the bar the night before. So I drove downtown to try to figure out exactly how we were all going to get in the water by the Memorial Bridge (I still don't get it - and I still don't want to get in the Potomac River *at* all).

While I was down there I ended up driving down the river to Haines Point - which is this huge amazing park right in DC that I never knew about. It's totally owned by cyclists - there were tons of people down there on super swanky bikes doing laps. The roads aren't closed, but the traffic is so light that they might as well be. The loop I rode - which will eventually be about half of the running race course for the DC tri, circles the golf course with great views of DC, the river and Reagan Airport. The problem was that it was a beautiful day... and the roads were so pretty... and my bike was in the car... so I went for a little ride. My legs were exhausted, but it was so nice to be outside. I miss outside. I really long for spring - more this year then I can remember before. Maybe because it's so much more fun to train outside so I notice it more this year? I don't know. But I feel impatient with the weather and totally sick of being cold. Actually - no - it's not even the cold. It's the damn freezing wind that keeps happening. It makes me irrationally mad at everything and seems to cut right through whatever I'm wearing, which just seems unfair. I mean, I feel that the whole purpose of sythetic fiber is to prove that man has mastered the elements. But I still feel like they're bitch-slapping me through $250 of goose down when I go to take out the garbage. REI! What the hell are you doing?! Get on it!

In other unrelated news I think I now have (finally) picked colors for the living room. Thank god (and my cousins). The guy who lived here before was meticulous in his taste and design, but was either color blind or aspired to live in a monastic cell. He painted everything white - trim, walls, shelves. Everything. I just can't take it anymore. I just want to take the entire apartment and dip it in red paint - so it's good my cousins gently made some less radical suggestions before I got completely fed up. I also realized (indecently early on Saturday morning) that I have officially made it through my least favorite month - extra day and all. I have always reserved a special place of quiet dread for February - which is normally the month I spend alone in my house baking muffins and writing long dreary journal entries about how it's cold and dark. Strangely enough, I saw the ex-girl's car on Friday night - the last day of that dreaded month - and had this moment of pure anger about the entire thing. And I decided, after slamming around my house for a very satisfying fifteen minutes, that that was a very good, healthy and justified reaction. I never really got anger before - I was like "eh. circumstances. it happens. whatever" (and believe me if I told you the circumstances you would ask me why *I* hadn't left) - but here's what I just realized: I am pissed off. Not only did she break up with me for mostly incoherent and inexplicable reasons - not to mention almost completely without warning - but she did it (are you sitting down?) ON THE PHONE (who DOES that to someone they've been dating for seven months??!!!). And she did it - fully and completely aware of my feelings about February - at the very end of January. May I just say, (HCBB - cover your ears!) "fuck that."

Anyway, once the anger simmered down (ie, eight minutes later), I also realized that if I hadn't put so much energy and time into that person then I wouldn't have been so upset when she left, and if I hadn't been so upset, I wouldn't have resolved to do something about it - and long story short - I wouldn't have signed up to do these triathlons. Some people might say that that was all to the good - but I think, given that I always knew that relationship wasn't going to work out, all in all, getting the kick to actually start training for a triathlon, which I've wanted to do for years, is not such a raw deal. I also think, looking at it from the other side, if I put so much time and energy into someone when I *knew* it wasn't going to work out, then I definitely need a hobby :) So - there you go: Triathlons - the best medicine when you really want to kick someone's ass, but prefer the more non-violent forms of communication :)