Turning the Corner

The softball games from Monday night went good; we won both, and the ankle seemed no worse for wear. Tuesday morning's 5:30AM run came early, but it brought success; I ran about 3.5 miles, with 2 of those miles being continuous.

Thursday came around with the goal of increasing to three miles of continuous running. Gone would be my total mileage goals, just continuous running goals from Thursday all the way up to the Indy Half. Melissa was nice enough to rabbit me around Rice; she led me to a spry 2.9 mile loop in under 27 minutes. That was certainly a great time considering my woes, and a good sign for the ankle. Saturday brought another StayFIT run that I joined the start/finish of, but that I did not run. They were doing their last hill workout of the season, and I had no interest in doing hills on the ankle, so I ran the two miles from their starting point to Memorial Park and back. I think that run was the one that proved, at least to me, that I will fully heal from the ankle injury one day. The pain was still there, though it was reduced. My speed wasn't completely back, but I did manage 9:45 min/miles on the way to the park, and 9:15 min/miles on the way back; it's a good sign when the ankle tolerates negative splits. Though I suppose I'm a "veteran" runner, it never hurts the head to have a run go well, and Thursday and Saturday are definitely in that category. For the first time, I have legitimate confidence that I'll be able to handle Indy.

So what's a guy with a better but still recuperating ankle to do on a Sunday, a cross-training day. He swims! That's right, I finally went to 24 HR Fitness with the goal go doing nothing but swimming. No weight lifting, no aerobic workout, just get in the pool and swim. This is all going towards my silly goal of doing a Half-Ironman Triathalon in October in Austin. Though the swim will be difficult, I'll certainly never have a chance unless I practice.

I decided to do the swim with my heart rate monitor. The reasoning behind that is there's some "stigma" attached to how hard I believe the swim will be; I think it will kick my ass. The only way to judge the amount of my ass that is indeed being kicked is to know how hard my heart is working. So the Auburn flip-flops came off, and into the rather cool, indoor water I went. I turned on my water-proof Polar heart rate monitor .... and it didn't work. I turned it on again .... nothing. The watch, mind you, it was working like a champ. The chest strap though, it didn't seem to be transmitting a signal to the watch! Normally this happens when the chest strap isn't damp enough; certainly not the case here! So I simply timed my treks from one end of the pool to the other, without knowing, definitively at least, how hard my ass was getting kicked.

I won't bore you with the details of the swim other than to say I think I learned something important. I've always complained that I swim like a brick; my ass drags through the water. When I swam head down, as if I were going to take a breathe on the side of a stroke like a real freestyle swimmer, I don't have that problem; I actually seem to swim pretty well. The problem is with the breathing, as I simply don't know how to breathe on the side of a freestyle stroke without inhaling most of the pool. This made for daunting 25 meter laps, but I did learn a key aspect of my swimming weakness.

Later on Sunday, I was around the swimming connoisseur himself, Eugene, and asked his advice on my oxygen woes. He said I probably wasn't turning my torso enough, robbing myself of full stroke power, and not allowing my head to get out of the water enough to get a clean breathe. He also said I should exhale while my head is under water, or as he put it, blow bubbles. If I can put his advice to into practice, I might actually be able to make it across the pool in better time and under MUCH better control of myself.

Bagel run Monday morning, then running with Melissa Tuesday morning. Thursday running of some kind, then the Rise Run (aka, the Chicken Run) 5k on Saturday morning. A busy week, but hopefully one that continues to see ankle improvement. Now I just need to find some time to get into a pool ....