Cleanse with Fire

I seem to be alone in not liking Queen... but I HAVE to like this:



and from there, I found this fucking wonderful mashup:



(latter is nsfw w/o headphones)

Jaw droppin' good.

I swim 2 miles per hour! (1.98 mph to be more precise). That's my average since I cracked a mile, not before. It also includes the outliers (like when I swim too fast too soon and I wind up going short because I cramp out, or fear cramping out). 1.95 mph w/o outliers. 2.06 mph with all swims.

Today's swim is nearly numerically identical to 2 swims ago. 15 seconds difference, < 1 sec average diff, fairly tight stddev... but damn does this swim feel better. All flip turns today, only rested on the 400s and that was more to see where my heart-rate was. Rough average was 180 each time. My heart-rate drops much quicker now. I get to 120 within 30-45 seconds now.

In short: rawr.

The headphones and waterproofed ipod that kushali got me are absolutely wonderful and they're changing how I swim considerably. Once the heart is more under control I'll prolly start swimming farther than a mile more often, stopping when I'm bored or otherwise done rather than to some preset value.

P.S. Lovely song... one of my long long time favorites.

...I
Have a man
It follows my hips with his hands
I'm laughing
At a man
It follows my lips with his melting eyes...

god I swoon every time that stanza plays

that was the most wonderfully stunningly seriously perfect movie

kushali got me the bestest birfday present ever! It is a waterproofed ipod shuffle (previous gen--one with real buttons) + headphones. So tiny that it all attaches to my googles. Perfect complement to the lap ring I bought. Now I can just swim and zone.

Here I am being a dork testing out the fit:



I'm gonna try it out soon. I haven't swam in a while because of my cold and vacation.

Life update soonish, I hope.

Happy Birthday kushali. May you have a wonderfully cubey year.

me: OK, pissy girl...
her: NOT PISSY! *hits*
me: *laughs until he chokes*

my favorite so far (click for more):

The abomination is nearing completion...

I need a butcher's apron. Clues?

I caught something. Rather mild, but annoying. A general malaise. The upside is that I sound like Barry White.

Today, just 6 weeks (and a day) after I started, I swam a straight mile (with one teeny break to work out a cramp in my ribs).

Go. fuckin'. me.

Also...

Yesterday I did 2 400s and then an 800. Today I really wanted to do a 400 and then a 1200 but it just wasn't happening. I suspect most of it was psychological rather than physiological. To confirm that, the entire swim just felt like I was doing worse, even tho the numbers show that I did marginally better than yesterday. *shrug* I'll get there. I hope to do a straight mile in the next week or two.

I've now swam 10 miles in 5 weeks. rawr.

4 miles in the last 6 days. woot. go me. *thump*

I definitely like the new schedule better... I'm not thrilled to be swimming on the weekend, but it is maximal spread and that's help recovery time a lot.

(the location legend is totally wrong--it is on the left near the bottom)

Despite there being between 200 and 300 bidders (and easily 500 people total), somehow I wound up winning on my favorite of the two units I was interested in. I even got a pretty good deal on it. They originally tried to sell the place for 65% over market value (redfin and others stated that broadway condos average $335/sqft, cap hill condos are $332/sqft). I decided I was willing to go as much as 15% over market value and the starting bid price was at 72% market value. I walked away 11% over the average and am pretty happy with that result. My other choice went for considerably more, so I'm doubly happy.

The kitchen is really pretty, has gas, a nice fridge, and an island with marble and stainless steel on wheels. There is really nice wood beams above the kitchen and wood flooring throughout the bottom floor. It is all really pretty. The upstairs... is odd. 1 bedroom + lofty space. It'll be a challenge to make it work smoothly, but so did the space I'm in now. I'm not sure how the BBQ will work out yet. I have a parking space, so maybe I'll BBQ in the garage. :P

Because I'm planning on doing... shall we say... an "interesting" finance plan (the bank keeps trying to talk me out of it. I keep telling them to go blow goats) and the fact that there weren't enough units in the building sold already to have FHA approval, I'm going to have to wait a while before I can close. FHA is underway and should finish "soon", so we're probably talking about mid-to-late November instead of on my birfday.

That's absolutely fine by me. I'm still a little shook up how things played out and keep saying "holy shit" every half hour or so.

Holy shit

Another mile, another rollup--doubled this time. I swam 4x200, and then did an 800 to finish. Rawr. I'm getting closer to swimming a straight mile.

In other news... Wednesday I ambled in to the Brix condo office and got preapproved for a sizeable loan in order to participate in an auction tomorrow (today technically--sunday). There is a townhouse there with a kitchen I'd adore. I'd probably keep my current place and rent it out, but I'm not positive about that yet. I'm going to try to pay this off as absolutely, (and in some people's opinion insanely) fast as I can... that is, assuming I get the place I want. There is a very remote chance of that, but who knows. Maybe in a month or so I'll be cooking with gas.

I'm both terrified and excited... and exhausted.

It's an ad, but it is a funny ad.

http://www.everyclickmatters.com/dangers/dokken.html

Another mile today. I've now hit 7 miles total and I've been swimming for less than a month!

I think I like the new schedule better. Much more recovery time.

I didn't feel very up to it tonight, so I just did 200s, and while it felt like crap, apparently I pulled off 0.94 yards per second (last mile was 0.88 and felt good) and 1750 yards in 31 minutes.

(ETA: yup... lj email post seems broken.... I had to add the text, even tho it was all at the bottom like LJ instructs)

I got one of these from amazon and tried it out for the first time tonight. You wear it on your index finger and it has a single button you can thumb to count off laps. It records the times for the last 100 laps you've done and you can recall them later.

The really nice thing about it is that you can just swim and worry about the distance and numbers later. If I'm recording on the 50, I can stop when it reads 32 and I've done a mile (including a 100 warmup beforehand that I don't record). I had 2 entry problems that wound up recording the time for a 100 instead of 50 but those were easy to fix.

Even better, I stopped stopping. The last 2 reps were 400s, not 200s. Just because. I liked that a lot.

I'm swimming a lot slower than I'd like (avg 0.87 y/s vs my sustained avg of 0.96 y/s), but that's totally fine for now. I've very obviously hit a stride considering how EXACTLY linear my time is. I'm starting to feel old patterns come back like the shoulder rolls that cause your whole body to twist with it. Feels good. I'll worry about speed after I've dealt with the stamina.

I think I'm going to enjoy this little bastard, if not for any other reason than having more numbers to play with. :)

I think at this point I could probably just get in and swim a mile. It'd be sloppy, but it'd be a mile.