I grew up with constant ear problems. I had countless surgeries on my ears including having my ear drums reconstructed. So for much of my childhood I was not allowed to go swimming. There was one summer where I was allowed to swim. I took swimming lessons with my brother, but I just was never very good. And after that I went back to not being allowed to swim again.
As I became an adult, I got opportunities to go swimming. I think I remember a doctor telling me that I could go swimming, but shouldn’t go diving. I would love to try scuba diving, so that is kind of a shame. But my swimming skills are limited to a weak breast stroke, a dog paddle, and a very sloppy freestyle. I just haven’t taken opportunities to practice.
I want to try a triathlon sometime. I can ride a bike, and I can run. I just don’t swim well enough to try swimming any distance. A co-worker of mine is a master level swimmer. He also teaches the Total Immersion system of swimming. He gave me some materials, and I have bought a book titled Triathlon Swimming Made Easy by Terry Laughlin.
These last few days I have had access to a swimming pool at a hotel where we are staying. I brought some swimming goggles, the book, and the other materials I got. He also gave me a couple DVDs, but I haven’t been able to get them to play on my laptop computer. I will watch them when I get home. I have been playing in the pool trying to do the first few drills in the books. They involve swimming with my arms at my sides, using just my legs, and trying to stay balanced horizontally. One of the drills was to swim on my back. I had a weird thing happen after only a few laps of this. I would get dizzy. The room would be rolling. After about a half dozen laps, I got out, and I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I had to sit down for a bit. I don’t know if this is normal. Maybe it has something to do with my ears? Or maybe this is because I am not used to swimming, and the motion of the water. My wife said she doesn’t get dizzy. Maybe it was just because I was swimming on my back?
Unlike most people, I don’t float. I am pretty lean and muscular, and have long legs. I am what Terry Laughlin’s book calls a sinker. So that will make things even more interesting.
When we get home, I may try to get the swimming pool at the local community center, and try to practice swimming. Also, my co-worker teaches swimming at a YMCA. I had asked previously about taking lessons, but they were on nights when I taught karate. But our karate school moved, and instead of classes being only Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have class 6 days a week. So I can teach karate on a couple different nights, and maybe go take the swimming lessons.
At home I run on Proform treadmill that I bought used on eBay. My treadmill has a few features, but it is older, noisy, and overall pretty basic. I don’t usually workout anywhere else. But my wife and I were celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary, and were staying as the Marriott hotel in Niagara Falls on the Canada side. Even though we were out of town, I still had a running schedule to follow. The website for the hotel said they had a fitness room, but didn’t give details. So one of the first things I looked at when exploring the hotel, was the fitness room. They had two Life Fitness 95te treadmills, a Life Fitness 95xe elliptical trainer, and a couple Life Fitness exercise bikes. But since I was only interested in running, I only used the treadmill.
The Life Fitness 95te is very cool and has a lot of features my Proform doesn’t. First, the thing is pretty quiet. That was a nice change. The side of the 95te treadmill says Flex Deck Shock Adsorption System. I didn’t notice much difference than my Proform as far as how hard the deck is. It was comfortable to run on.
It has a touchscreen which was interesting. I got started by touching the screen. It asked me some questions such as my weight, and what mode I wanted to use. It also asked me whether I wanted to limit my run by time, or distance. I always chose distance, since that’s what my running schedule goes by.
I was able to watch TV on the touchscreen. I used the headphones from my mp3 player. I wish I had had some headphones with a longer cord.
The mode I mainly used was the Manual mode. But some of the other modes were Fat Burn, Cardio, Hill, Random, Fit Test, Personal Trainer, and Zone Training.
Fat Burn and Cardio work similarly to each other. You set the speed, and then it will raise or lower the incline of the treadmill to adjust the intensity of the workout to keep your heart rate near a percentage of your theoretical max heart rate. For the Fat Burn mode, the percentage is 65%, and for the cardio it is 80%.
The Hill and Random modes will raise and lower the incline of the treadmill. The Hill mode has a predefined course with 4 phases. The Random mode has randomly created hills, so the workout is different each time.
There are a bunch of sub modes for the Fit Test mode. They are Life Fitness Fit Test, Army, Gerkin (for fire fighters), Navy, PEB (for law enforcement such as FBI), Marine, and Air Force. I did the Life Fitness Fit Test, which had me walk for about a minute at 0% incline, then it raised the incline to 5%, and I walk at grade for another 4 or 5 minutes. The treadmill monitored my heart rate. I first did it at the default 2mph, but it said my heart rate was too low, and to do it again at a faster speed. So I did it again at 4.5mph. It said I was above average. I don’t know what the other potential results are, or if that is the best one. Of course, I had run 5 miles this morning, and had already been playing on the treadmill with the other modes. So who knows? I am scheduled to run 10 miles tomorrow, so I may try the fat burn, or the cardio mode.
Another neat feature of the Life Fitness 95te is that it is compatible with my Polar heart hate monitor chest strap. I had brought my watch down with me, but found my heart displaying on the screen also. So for my next workouts, I just wore the chest strap, and left the watch in my room.
I wish I had one of these Life Fitness treadmills at home.
My wife and are currently staying at the Marriott Fallsview in Niagara Falls Canada. Just because I am away from home doesn’t mean my train schedule goes out the window. The hotel does have a fitness room. They have a couple of treadmills, an elliptical, exercise bike, and a weight machine. The treadmill is a Life Fitness, and I think the elliptical trainer is too.
I had never used a treadmill like this before. It had a touch screen, and all kinds of interesting features. It asked my weight, so I typed it in. Pretty soon I was walking, then running. At first I was listening to my mp3 player, but then I realized I could watch TV on the treadmill touch screen. So I unplugged the headphones from my mp3 player, and plugged it into the treadmill. I watched The Simpsons while I ran. Another cool thing was the treadmill picked up the signal from my Polar heart monitor chest strap, and displayed my heart rate on the screen. I had finished the can of Diet Pepsi I had brought down, so I wanted to get some water. I hit stop, and got some water. But apparently hitting stop had reset the TM to the beginning. I had already run 2 ½ miles, so I still had 9 ½ miles to go. I entered all the stuff again, and started running. Another cool thing was I could program several buttons on the screen. I set the “walk” button to 4mph, and the “jog” button to 6mph. I ran for a while longer, and bumped the roped attached to the key thing. The treadmill stopped, and reset to the beginning again. That was annoying. I got everything set up again, and started running again. After running for a while I wanted to get some more water. This time I hit the pause button. I got some water and walked around for a minute. I went to get back on the treadmill, and found that it had timed out or something, and reset yet again to the beginning. Reprogrammed the bloody thing yet again. I think I managed to run 6 miles out of the 12 I had planned on running. I was getting hungry, and started to feel bad that I left my wife up in the hotel room. So I called it a day, and headed back to the room.
I have been reading that headphones are being banned from running events like marathons. I have run two distance events. A half marathon, and a full marathon. And both I had my mp3 player. I did one duathlon, and headphones weren’t allowed. They say it is for safety, but also because it counts as technical assistance? Assistance? What kind of assistance does an mp3 player provide other than distracting the runner from long boring tedious miles.
I am not sure if this will be enforced. The only reason I train is to run the events. And if the events aren’t going to allow mp3 players, then the events are going to be a lot more boring. I may just give up running altogether. I really don’t enjoy the running itself. But if they aren’t even going to allow me to take my mp3, then screw it, and screw them.
I am already signed up for several events. I saw that the Rochester Marathon said on their site no headphones. I didn’t see anything like that on the Buffalo Marathon site. I will have to look into the ultramarathon I registered for to see if they mention it.
But running is so frigging boring. One foot in front of the other, repeat as necessary. I can’t imagine doing it for 4 or 5 hours straight with no music or anything.
This week was the biggest distance week of my short running career. I ran 5 miles on Tuesday, 10 miles on Wednesday, 5 miles on Thursday, 10 miles on Saturday, and then 20 miles today. So it was a 50 mile week.
I have been running the longer runs but walking every 5th minute. The running would start out fast (for me) at about 6 mph. But I wouldn’t be able to keep that pace long and keep my heart rate under 145. My speed would slowly decrease to 5.8, to 5.6, to 5.4, or even lower. Sometimes it was get so slow that I would have to walk to keep my heart rate down. But today I played with running 3 minutes, and walking 2 minutes. I manage to do most of the running at 6 mph (10 minute miles), and I would walk at 4 mph (15 minute miles).
After all the running today, I am kind of tired. Not sleepy tired, but just generally fatigued. My pedometer reads almost 38,000 steps for the day.
This coming week I am only scheduled to run 34 miles. Then I am back to 50 miles the following week. But this should be getting ready to run the Buffalo Marathon on May 27th. I still need to register for that thing. Then I am registered for the Damn Wakely Dam Ultra (32.6 miles) in July.