After sitting on my ass for most of the year, I'm finally getting back to being active. I basically sat around so long because of excuses (and foot surgery). The foot surgery put me out for 1 month, but if I'm being totally honest, I should have been back doing something by mid-July.
Part of my excuse was how much I wanted to rejoin my old swim team. I kept hearing rumors that we'd be getting our old pool back, and my fear was that I'd join a new team and then within weeks my old team would be back at the old pool. Which meant that I just didn't do anything except wait. Also, the other team I was considering is at a private health club, and for some silly reason, I thought that it was mega-expensive. I finally called at the end of July to get costs - turns out this place is only $7/month more than the old club. And its only 5 min away from my house instead of 25, so I figure with the gas savings, this place may be even cheaper. So, I told myself that no ifs ands or buts, I'd be joining this new team at the end of August.
So, my first day of practice, one of my former teammates is there - which absolutely made my day. She had great things to say about the coaches, which also helped. We have 2 different coaches. We've got morning practice on M and W, coached by Jason. Jason is pretty much a slacker (he's never at practice on time), but since there's so few people at the AM practice, I get a *lot* of personal attention. He's already fixed several things which I knew my old coach had tried to fix, but I just never understood. Old coach was more esoteric ("try these 3 things and tell me which feels better). Jason is very straight foward ("you're doing this wrong - try moving your arm this way"). So that right there is great. We have night practice on Tues and Thurs, coached by Stacy. Stacy is really trying to grow the team and have high participation at meets. She's also trying to kill all of us. And the facility is really nice - makes me feel really dumb for not signing up earlier.
So, starting up after not swimming for a year, and not doing anything cardio-related since January was rough. My third week back, Stacy had us swim 10x 100 yd free sprints for time. I just wanted to survive. I swam an average of 1:35 and kept my time +/- 1 second, and my stroke count was consistent through out the set.
Flash foward to last night - another 10x 100 free sprints. I averaged 1:23, with a low time of 1:20. Of course, I'm convinced the pool is short - not that I'm actually improving.
I still need to sign up for a meet that's in 2 weekends. I just wish it wasn't a 1.5 hr drive to the meet.
All in all - swimming is going quite well. The only kicker is that the pool is outside, but heated. the water - not the air. It was 47 degrees this morning - that was a wee bit chilly. We'll see how this winter goes. However, with the old team, there were times the pool wasn't working or we didn't have hot water. This new place has hot water and 2 pools, so I think I'm better off where I am now.
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My other athletic persuit is that I signed up do WALK a half marathon in January. Which was why I needed the foot surgery. For the past year, I couldn't walk more than 3 miles without a lot of pain and funky blisters.
So now my toes are fine and I'm having to train. I honestly thought that with my swimming and cardio base, I really only had to spend 1 day a week walking. Yeah..... not really. Apparently since swimming is a non weight bearing activity, I need to walk more like 2-3 times a week. Good in theory, hard in practice. So far, I'm lucky to spend an hour walking once a week. I need to figure out a way to balance out the swimming and walking. Which probably means I'll have to sacrifice one swim workout (out of 4).
So, that's what's up with me and trying to whip myself into shape. Hopefully regular workouts means that I'll also be doing regular blog entries. Or one can hope.
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