Last night I had my 3rd swimming lesson. I am slowly getting better. I have been taking coaching tips and combining them with stuff from Terry Laughlin’s books & videos (the Total Immersion stuff). I found that when I had my head all the way down in the water, my legs came up. I was more balanced, and I seemed to move faster through the water with less effort. Very cool.
But I also found myself last night, getting dizzy and nauseous at points. At one point I got out of the pool and felt like I might throw up. The room seemed to be moving, and I got a headache for a while.
When I got home, I was scheduled to run for an hour. But my stomach was upset. Not enough to keep me from eating, but enough that I didn’t want to be bouncing up and down on a treadmill. I skipped my run and will do it tonight.
I have a history of getting sea sick on boats in rough water. So maybe that is what is going on. But I didn’t seem to have the same problems when swimming before. Well except when I tried swimming on my back, such as a back float, or backstroke. I ate dinner before I went to swim lessons. Maybe that had something to do with it. What I think is the most likely cause is water getting into my ears. I think when I did the back float stuff, and when I swim doing the front crawl with my head deeper in the water, I am getting water in my ears. And I think that is messing with my equalibrium. I bought ear plugs, so I will try those. I am planning on going swimming tomorrow night, or maybe this weekend. My wife suggested that she would come with me to swim laps.
My goal is to do an Ironman triathlon next year. I haven’t registered for one yet. I am going to try to get into the Lake Placid Ironman. But I still have a ton of training to do. I am just starting to learn to swim decently. I want to improve my cycling fitness as well. I have ridden a single century ride and that was relatively flat. I have run 5 marathons with the fastest being 3:30, so I am not too worried about the running part.
So while I am waiting to get into some Ironman triathlon or other, I am working on building my fitness. I bought multiple book of training for an Ironman. The one that intrigues me the most is BeIronFit or Be Iron Fit by Don Fink. It has some interesting schedules, including Just Finish, Intermediate and Competitive. My next schedule marathon isn’t until November (the New York City Marathon). I may do a half marathon in September with a friend at a relatively slow 10:00 pace. I may also do a full marathon in October. My next running race is next month and that is an extreme trail ultramarathon. But I am planning on taking that one kinda easy. I may try to do a century ride or two this summer as well.
So in the meantime, I am going to play with some training schedules. I have decided to use the Be IronFit intermediate schedule to train for the Ultramarathon. I have already been doing running and biking, and am now going to add some swimming. I probably wont do the schedule verbatum, but will soften it a little especially the swimming. Since I am just learning to swim, I am not up to all the drills. So I will just try to make my way back and forth across the pool, working on basic technique at this point. Also, I might shorten some of the longer bike rides.
All the running and biking stuff is heart rate monitor based. It’s been a while since I have done heart rate monitor training. I am faster now, but my resting heart rate is higher too. Maybe I will improve my aerobic fitness some. I have already qualified for Boston, so now I can relax some. I will need aerobic fitness for an Ironman since my goal is simply to finish at this point.
I must say it’s a little wierd being a 44 year old athlete, and being taught swimming by high school kids. But what the hey. The regular teacher was not there last night. He had told me last week he would be there, but told me someone would be.
I got to the pool a little early and was relaxing in the hot tub. A cute girl named Emily asked if I was the student, and I said yeah. She asked me what I wanted to learn and I told her my goal of swimming in an Ironman. She had me get in the pool and show her what I knew. I swam clumsily across the pool. She commented that I wasn’t as bad as she was expecting.
Another girl named Marissa who apparently is another life guard joined in. Soon they were tag-teaming trying to teach me stuff. The lesson unfortunatly was disorganized. I don’t really know what I need to know, so they were trying to teach me everything they could thing of.
I did learn some stuff. I learned that if I try to float or swim on my back, it totally messed up on my equilibrium and I get dizzy, and even a little nausious. So much for the back float. They worked on trying to teach me the breast stroke. I couldn’t seem to get the whip kick part right though. They also touched on the modified side stroke. Emily did give me a few tips on my front crawl though, such as lifting my elbow out of the water in the back, and where to breathe. She also had me try swimming with a snorkle. This did not work out so well. I have snorkled around in the Caribbean. But I think the difference was I had a mask covering my nose. That’s another thing. I want to get a nose plug. I keep getting water in my nose when I swim.
There were points where I was feeling more comfortable in the water while doing a front crawl. I was working on relaxing, and stretching out my stroke to make it longer.
When the hour was done, I showered, changed, and headed home for my 5 mile run.
The lesson was probably not as productive as it could have been. But the girls were very nice. I’ll get this stuff down eventually.
It has been in the mid 90’s in our part of the country. I normally run inside on my treadmill. Even with the air conditioner on, the temp can be in the mid-70s. But mid 90’s is insane! This last weekend we drove to the Pittsburgh area for a wedding. I didn’t have access to a treadmill, so I had to run outside. I was scheduled to 15 miles, but planned to only run 10. I go up early in the morning, and headed out to run. It was already warm. I ended up only running 5 miles. By the time I got back to the house, it was already starting to get hot.
Last night I was scheduled to run intervals. I have aikido class right after work, and planned to run the intervals when I got home like I normally do. But there is no AC in the aikido dojo. I was sweating just doing the light warm up/stretching. By the time class ended, I was drained. I got home, and just was not up to running at all. I had gotten dressed for running, but just could not bring myself to get on the treadmill. Ack!
I am hoping to run tonight. It is a little cooler. But I have swim class from 7:30-8:30. So I need to either run before class, or after class. I am leaning to afterwards. But I might be able to squeeze in the run beforehand. We will see. I can maybe abreviate the warmup/cool down. Oh, and I still need to eat dinner tonight. And a nap would be nice. Of course I want to work on my tri-bike. So many things to do and not enough time!
Well, I got in. I have had friends tell me that this is a must do race. I have read accounts of it in some of my books. I thought about entering the lottery for it last year, but stopped just short of entering. I was a mouse click away. This year I pulled the trigger. I figured I had a 1 in 4 chance of actually getting in. I already have a couple friends that are going to be there. I have some other friends that are waiting for the lottery results. Good thing I got it since I might not have done the lottery next year. The waiting has been a pain in the butt. I haven’t been able to make any plans as far as other races. I was looking at doing the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, PA. But that is only a few weeks before the NYC marathon. I could still do the Rochester Marathon, or maybe just do the half marathon as a training run. Not sure yet. I have to figure out what my training schedule will be. I worked up a training schedule for the Steamtown marathon, and my Wakely Dam ultra fell on a day when I was scheduled to do a 20 mile run. It was perfect. I guess this really ties it that I will be doing the half marathon in Las Vegas…if there is a race in Las Vegas this year.
I have a hotel room reserved at the Park Savoy which is a block from the finish line. I still need to work out all the logistics of getting to New York City, where to park, how to get around, etc.
Ack!
And what do I wear? Maybe my long sleeve tuxedo shirt? DO I run for a fast time, or a slower and easier pace, and just take in the sites? I will bring my camera for sure and take lots of pictures during the run. But I already have my Boston Qualifying time for 2009, so I am set there. We’ll see how things go.