Thursday, January 20, 2011

It hurts so good

So I didn't quite get to 3000 yards last night. That was probably a bit ambitious considering I hadn't swam more than 1000 yards since last fall. But I did do 2050 yards in an hour, which is just a few minutes slower than I did it for Timberman. Granted, I definitely couldn't have ridden 56 miles to follow it, but compared to where I started last year it's starting at a better place, with the stamina to go twice as far. I had the stamina to do more, but I also had a seriously painful leg cramp that struck for the second time in a week during my last 50 yards. It hit me first just sitting with my feet up the other day, and it hit hard enough that I had to have Rach help me relax it.

And I've lost 5 pounds since Sunday. I'm super excited to be going the right direction again. My eating hasn't been what I am shooting for, but I'm being patient with myself about it, because it is coming around. I'm taking it day by day and making better choices with each meal. It's actually a fun part of the year, because it's easy to see progress after not doing much and eating sort of whatever I wanted in Vegas.

Oh, and about the half-ironman.We found out that Rach's conference doesn't actually start until 6/20, with the day before being just a registration day. After learning yesterday that the Ironman 70.3 Providence was available to us, the better understanding of Rachelle's conference schedule also opened up the Patriot Half-Ironman, a local race run by the same people who put on the Multisport Expo and Cranberry Olympic.

Last year, we did the Minuteman Sprint held at the same time as the Patriot, and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best races we did last year, and it's a great setting. The course is challenging without being overwhelming, it's closer to home than Mooseman or Quassy, and it may wind up being a focus race for Wheelworks. Plus, it gives us the opportunity to do Quassy Olympic to contest the USAT Club Championship as the Quassy Olympic is the same weekend as Mooseman but two weeks earlier than Patriot.

Oh, and did I mention that Patriot is $100 cheaper per person to do? Finally, without knowing where we'll be living after June, we didn't want to commit to any later season races other than Rev3 Cedar Point, so that meant Providence didn't really make sense. We registered for Patriot Half last night, and are excited for the opportunity to do the race. Doing Patriot also allows us to follow the race with a visit to Cape Cod, which was a lot of fun last year.

Notes:

- I used the Swimsense again with my swim last night. I was pretty happy again. I wound up swimming just shy of 2100 yards, but the system showed me swimming 2100. When I look at the logs, it's obvious which two lengths it added. One was because I made some extra motion with my left arm during a turn/stop, and the other I'm not sure where I caused it to kick over an extra lap. I will say even when it picks up a motion that is not a swim stroke, thereby adding an extra lap, it's super easy to tell where those issues are in the view of the workout. Now, FINIS just needs to allow you to edit workouts in the software.

3 comments:

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  2. Ben,

    See you there! I registered for Patriot on December 18th while watching the 2010 Ironman World Championships. It happened to be 6 months to the day, prior to the race. Maybe we can do a few training rides together in the spring?

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  3. Hey Ben! Thanks for your nice comment on my blog.
    5lbs since Sunday is super!! Keep up the good work!
    I love that you can do races together. That's so nice and must make it easier that you can share that together. Hopefully I'll see you at one of these races someday.

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