Project Exercise

I was able to get in the pool at 5:35am.  For some reason there weren’t as many people in the pool this morning.  I usually have to share a lane for a while, but this morning I had a lane to myself right off the bat.  The water was a bit cold, but I didn’t mind too much because I usually warm up pretty fast.  I did the following…

• 1 x 100
• 1 x 550
• 1 x 1150
• 2 x 100

I used my Garmin 310XT to count off laps and take lap times.  During my warm up and cool down laps I was able to get 1:50 / 100 yards, however, when I go long my laps time drop considerably as I go farther.  I was between 1:58 and 2:05 when I went long.  It would be nice if I can improve on my speed over the next few months.  Using the Garmin to count laps is a big help.  When I thought I counted 500 yards, I actually did 550 and, as you can see above, when I thought I did a 1000 yard swim I actually did 1150.  At least I make the error in favor of training longer. When I got home this afternoon I jumped on the indoor trainer and knock out 50 minutes on the bike.  Man, the trainer is so boring.  I just wanted off at 30 minutes, however, I had 50 minutes to do so I kept going.  It is purely a mental challenge.  I watched the news.  When that was over I watched “The Biggest Loser” which I had recorded last week.  The cycling became easier when I watch TBL.  To be quite honest, there is no way I could do the trainer without my TV.  It would be nice to get out and ride, but it is just not worth competing with the rush hour traffic and the narrow shoulders.  I hope to get in a good ride this Saturday.

Ok, so I will leave you with this core workout video…

I was going to do a swim this morning, however, when I got up I noticed that it wasn’t raining.  We have been having morning rain lately.  So I decided to put on my running gear and take off running.  I wanted to work on lengthening my stride since my knee has held up on the last couple runs.  I am really slow so I hoped that I could lengthen my stride to cover more distance for each step.  So I am feeling pretty good as a start out my run.  I feel a little low grade knee pain, but that is normal for me.  I look at my Garmin and I notice that my pace is better than normal.  I normally have a choppier stride because I favor my bad knee.  My right hip also gets kind of sore since I am compensating for my bad knee.  In short, I have bad running form.  Anyway, about half way through my run it starts to rain.  In fact, it begins to come down fairly heavy.  Being the meat head that I am I figure I may as well keep going because I am already wet.  Well, being a bit over-confident about my knee, I take my long strides and I hit one of the rectangular diamond plate covers on the sidewalk.  Of course, it is my left leg (my bad side) that hits it and I begin to slide.  Next my knee gets a sharp pain and I go down pretty hard.  It was about 5:20am and there wasn’t anyone around so nobody got to enjoy the free entertainment.  It was, however, one of those YouTube moments.  You know… old guys goes down like a buffoon.  The good news is that my pride wasn’t hurt too much because there wasn’t any witnesses.  The bad news is I got some cool road rash on my elbows from trying to avoid a face plant.  My knee also hurts like hell!

Here is a video of a guy who had a similar experience…

I was supposed to go running this morning, however, it was raining so instead I headed for the pool.  I had a good session… 1 x 100 warm up, 1 x 1500 main swim, 2 x 100 cool down.  I am getting into my bad habit of breathing on one side.  So during the cool down I completely breathed from the other side.  I notice my feet sinking when I breathed on my left so I know I am lifting my head instead of rotating and breathing from the side.  I don’t do that when I breath from the right.  I need to continue practicing my bilateral breathing.  It is just so uncomfortable for me.

Later in the day I knocked out a shoulder workout using a combination of dumbbells and my Tower 200.  Since it is still raining this evening, I may do another swim tomorrow morning.  I hope the shoulder workout doesn’t take too much out of my swimming session.

One of the things that coaches recommend for freestyle swimmers is keeping their elbows high when bringing their arms out of the water.  I notice that it is something that I have been doing naturally.  I watch other swimmers in the pool to get some visual tips and I notice that some swimmers do not do the movement well and as a consequence they do the hand slapping the water thing.   When you see it, you can really understand why the coaches teach the technique.  Anyway, as I said, it is something that I have done naturally even though I am not a competitive swimmer.  I have a whole bunch of other problems with my freestyle stroke, but at least that is one thing I do correctly.  I came to realize that I probably bring my elbows high because I grew up surfing in very rough water.  In those days we didn’t have board leashes so when you fell off you had to swim for your board.  You swam in chop and through waves so you had to bring your elbows up high to clear the churning water.

Here is a “Total Immersion” freestroker.  This is one of my favorite freestyle videos.  This person just slips through the water.

I went for a swim this morning.  I really enjoy starting my day with a swimming session.  I did 2 x 100 warm up, 1 x 1500 main swim, 1 x 100 cool down.  I had the bright idea to use my Garmin 310xt to count laps, get lap times and average lap times.  So during the main swimming session (1500 yards), I hit the “Lap” button on my Garmin every time I did a round trip (every 50 yards).  Everything was working fairly well.  I hit the lap button after touching the wall.  Since I can’t do flip turns, it was a bit of a clumsy move.  However, I was getting it done.  Now I had a way to count my laps.  The only problem is that my Garmin’s battery went dead around 300 yards into the session.  Drat!!!

The good news is that it did count my laps and gave me average lap times.  My 50 yard average was 55 seconds (which gives me 1:50 per 100 yards).  I am not sure if that is good or bad because I don’t know what a good time is for 100 yards.  I wish it would have worked for the entire swim because it really does not tell me if I can sustain that time on a long swim.

I am built for power, not speed.  Especially when it comes to running.  I am the “slow” athlete.  So it would be nice if I can become somewhat fast in something.  Maybe I can work on the swim.  About 16 years ago a friend of mine who was the same age as I am now used to swim every single day.  He was dedicated and consistent.  I remember thinking that swimming was such a great exercise for an old guy.  Now I am that old guy and I find that I enjoy swimming.  I must admit that after my body took a beating from the marathon training.  The non-impact training that swimming provides works well for me.  I guess it is because I was never an endurance athlete.  Up until a couple years ago I was that meat head weight lifter gym rat that you see in your local gym.  I was actually pretty good at it.  During my military days I actually competed and won lifting contests.  I could never go back to that sort of training.  I may get flamed by the lifters, but the only thing weight lifters can do over other fitness enthusiast is lift heavy stuff.  It is not really an athletic workout.  I perfer P90X and Tabata style workouts.  I still like to lift, but now I enjoy mixing it up with cardio and endurance workouts like, well, swimming, cycling and even running (which I don’t do so well).  I think it is a much more athletic approach.  Besides, I don’t know how long my body could have taken that heavy lifting.

This video is nuts! Actually, it’s about nuts.

I got up several times during the evening feeling like I wanted to throw up.  I kind of think it may have been a mild case of food poisoning or something.  A good friend from Virginia was visiting so we took her out to eat.  I had the fish.  Maybe there was something wrong with it.

I was supposed to do a swim today, but when the alarm went off I was still feeling a little queazy.  I struggled with heading to the pool.  In the end, I decided to cancel the swim.  I was a bit bummed out with myself, but it was the right thing to do.  That is not something I normally do.  Last year I worked out when I had pneumonia just so I could stay on my P90X schedule… geez, what a dolt!  At my age I am supposed to know better.  It’s good to be driven, but I am not really training for anything special right now.

Around 10am I began to feel much better.  At that point all I could think about was getting a workout done.  So when I got home I did a 1 hour session on the bike and did a back workout.  Man, that was a long hour on the trainer.  I didn’t have anything good on the DVR so I watched some Fox News stuff.

Ok, soapbox time.  What is it that POTUS and his far left cronies in the House don’t understand?  Even the most objective polls show that more than half the country does not not agree with the 2700 page health care bill they are trying to shove down our throats.  This reconciliation process is a joke.  The far left loons in the House feel that a 51% majority overrides what more than half American public wants.  Where is the logic?  They are so out of touch with the citizens of this country.  You know it’s not so much that I disagree with their health care reform proposal (which I vehemently oppose), it’s the fact that they just plain don’t seem to give two sh!ts about what we, as a nation, think.  I am sick of them pushing their personal agendas on us.  Ok, that’s it for the health care thing.  Don’t even get me started on the all the money the Dems want to spend on their weak social agendas.  I will save my comments about their plan to bankrupt this country for another day.  Btw, anyone ready to label me as a mouthpiece for the GOP, save it.  I am a conservative Independent.  I have been a conservative Independent way before anyone thought about having a “Tea Party”.

Now back to the health and fitness world.  Check out these dumbbell windmills.  Actually, this guy uses kettlebells, but I have also seen this movement done with dumbbells.  Looks like an intense core exercise.  After you watch the video, imagine doing it for a Tabata session.

I got up early this morning to pound the pavement.  Ouch, my knee hurts when I say that!  Seriously, I could feel some low grade pain in my left knee during my run.  As I try to get into a weekly running routine, I want to minimize the chances of having my knee stop my running cold like it did during my marathon training.  So I am slowly building my base running in zone 2.  Although I could feel some pain in my knee, the good news is that it didn’t lock up on me.

The next time I run during a week day, I am going to have to take my cold knee wrap to the office so I can ice my knee a bit.  The low grade knee pain that I got during the run lasted the whole day.  It’s okay, though, because I am happy that my knee actually held together for the run.

When I got home I strength trained my chest.  I used a combination of dumbbell bench presses and my Tower 200.  It is hard to wrap your brain around these resistance bands giving one a good workout.  However, when you attached multiple bands to the handle, trust me, you get plenty of resistance.  I got a pretty good pump out of the workout.

As most of you know, Hawaii was under a tsunami warning.  The warning was posted last night and although we have had 4 ocean surges at this point, the warning has not been lifted.  I live a little less than a mile from the beach, but outside of the “inundation zone”.  Most of the roads around my house are closed.  I have been watching the traffic cams and it looks like a ghost town out there.

The primary bike path runs along the road that is inside of the inundation zone and the police are stopping all traffic (vehicular, foot and cycle).  My plan was to get on the bike and go on a 20 mile ride with hill training.  Since I did not know how long we would be in this situation I decided to do a session on the indoor trainer.  I jumped on the trainer about 20 minutes before the first surge was expected to hit so that I could watch the events local news (which has been on non-stop since last night).  I rode for an hour.  After the ride I jumped on my Tower 200 to knock out a shoulders, biceps and triceps workout.

We have had a few surges so far and it has been uneventful.  That is good news for us.  We have had life and property losses in the past from tsunamis so we take this stuff seriously around here.  It’s kind of like when they talk about a hurricane on the gulf coast, people listen.  Actually, I was on the island of Kauai when hurricane Iniki hit in 92.  All the houses around our house were flattened.  Our house, surprisingly sustained minor damage.  Anyway, I digress… it looks like we dodged the bullet on this one.  It was interesting to watch the ocean surge out and expose the reef just prior to each surge.  My mom saw the same thing in 1946 as a child on the island of Molokai.  At that time, we didn’t have the technology for a tsunami warning so most of the folks were not sure what was happening.  Then all of a sudden a wall of water slammed onto the island shore.  At that time we lost life and property.

I am watching the news right now and there are already reports of house thefts at homes that were evacuated.  What the heck!!!  That is really disappointing.

I ordered a Road ID last night.  I am sure most of you already know what a Road ID is.  If your races have been anything like the ones we have here, you have probably found Road ID coupons in your race packets.  Anyway, I after I ordered it I got an email from the company with a promo code that can be used to get a $1 off.

Coupon Number: ThanksIokepa622320

This coupon is good for $1 off any Road ID order. It can be used up to 20 times in the next 30 days.  Btw, Iokepa is my Hawaiian name.  I don’t use it on this blog because a lot of folks can’t pronounce it.  LOL!!!  Actually, folks around here simply call me Kepa.  Darn, I got off on a tangent again.  I went on YouTube and searched on Road ID and I came up with a video of a blind runner who carries several Road IDs!

I was thinking about taking a rest day today, but I ended up being a meat-head (as my buddy Jeff says).  So, instead, I got up at 4:45am and went to the YMCA for some swimming.  I got in the pool at 5:45am and did 1700 yards.

• Warm up 1oo yards
• Main Swim 1500 yards
• Cool down 100 yards

I was out of the pool about 6:25am, showered up and headed to work.

During the warm up and cool down I practiced bilateral breathing every 3 strokes.  During the main swim I occasionally did some bilateral breathing.  Instead of bilateral breathing every 3 strokes, however, I would do a length of the pool breathing on the right side and the return length breathing on the left side.  Most of the main swim, however, was done one-sided breathing on the right side.  Breathing on the left is just not comfortable for me.  I would really like to master bilateral breathing.  However, I actually swim faster doing one-sided breathing.  I am sure I could swim just as fast or faster with bilateral breathing if can master the technique.

During the main swim I had to really concentrate on form.  The arm workout that I did yesterday affected the swim today.  I am just getting back into swimming, biking and running (no I haven’t committed to running another triathlon).  I have been doing P90X, Insanity, i30×5 and Tabata type of workouts for the past 3 months so I need to get used to the multisport training.  If I am not committing to another triathlon, then why the heck am I siwmming, biking and running.  Well, because I enjoy ot.  So for me its swim, bike, run and lift.

I wanted to do a lifting session today, however, I got busy after work and let life get in the way.

You know how they say, “no pain, no gain”?  Here is the “pain”…

I worked from home today because my son had to stay home from school.  He wasn’t feeling well.  My wife also fell sick this morning so I ended up staying home to watch both of them.

Late this afternoon I was able to get a 5k run done.  I was pleasantly surprised that my knee held up through the run.  There was some dull pain, but no sharp pains or lock ups.  I ran the entire time in zone 2.

I was also able to get do a biceps and triceps workout.  I was supposed to be on a recovery week from strength training.  I will just do it next week.  It was just an excuse to play on the Tower 200.

Ok, I gotta keep it short this evening.  So I will leave you with a video of an angry cat.  Reminds me of a guy at the gym who has roid rage.

I thought I had cold symptoms a couple days ago, but I think I have sinusitis.  I went to the WebMD site and the symptoms are right on.  After my swim today I was just miserable at the office.  As soon as I got home I took Sudafed PE.  That helped a lot.  After every pool session I have been having trouble with my sinuses.  I will take Sudafed right after my next swim to reduce the symptoms.

Anyway, I did 2200 yards today.  I started with a warm up of 1 x 200, then a main swim of 2000 yards and a cool down of 100 yards.  I wasn’t trying to go particularly fast.  I just wanted to “go the distance”.

I came across this swimming calculator that counts laps using an accelerometer.  It is called “Pool-Mate“.  You don’t have to push buttons to count each lap.  It also gives overall time, average strokes per lap, speed, distance, and calories burned.

I wanted to go running this afternoon, however, this sinus thing just tore me up so I will have to try a run another time… maybe tomorrow.

Here is a Pool-Mate video…