Cleanse with Fire

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.

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.

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.

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.

1400 yards today. I was planning on doing 1600 to hit my distance goal early. I was... but then I had the worst cramp I've ever had in my life right past the 1400 mark. Stopped me dead, and this is coming from the guy who likes cramps and induces them on occasion.

The cramp was in my right calf. I don't know if you've noticed, but I kinda sorta have kinda sorta large strong calves. They're kinda sorta the strongest things I've got. I've done 600# single calf presses without a problem. Why? Because I can, not because I'm trying to cultivate monster calves. I'm gonna have them whether I want to or not.

The point I'm trying to make is, I'm not actually strong enough to overpower it if one decides to seize up on me. I couldn't. I've never felt any muscle in my body be so hard. I wasn't sure what I could do about it at the time. I couldn't straighten my leg out, and I couldn't pull my toes up towards my head to stretch it out. It wasn't panic inducing or anything, but I was alone in the pool when it happened. It was a bit scary.

Anyhow. I'm actually ahead of schedule to reach my total distance goal. The next step is to start increasing the distance of each set. I actually did that tonight by doing 5x200y. Once I can do a full swim with 200s, it is time to get underwater headphones and a case/bag for an ipod. 400s are fucking boring.

I need to figure out what's going on with the cramps. This wasn't the first time (minor cramps in my quads last week). I wasn't dehydrated at all. No clue.

I just swam 1200 yards, putting me at 5000 yards since a started. That's 2.84 miles so far (0.68 miles tonight!). Not bad. Not good either. I swam this distance (-100y) in one afternoon for a swimathon when I was 12 or so. *shrug* I'll get there eventually. One interesting aspect is that my heart rate seems to be doing much better (tho, admittedly, I'm not doing the 12 breath rest thing that I'm supposed to be doing... fuck that... I'll die).

1000 yards... getting better

I'm still not a fish.

Swam another 750 yds. First 100 was almost entirely underwater for a warmup. I'm getting better at it. Swam 7 100s straight up, with no pyramid or anything. Avg was 102.8s, best was 90s, and my avg bpm was 175 (max 190). Numbers are actually all worse except that I'm sustaining more and longer which is much more important to me at this point.

Got even more evidence tonight that even at my worst/heaviest/unhealthiest, I'm still more of a fish than 90% of the people out there. damn there are some truly horrific swimmers out there. I'll take whatever validation I can get at this point, thankyouverymuch.

Swam 750yds last night. Getting better. I didn't have to switch to breast stroke for anything. Average speed is going up. While I'm still not sticking to the original 12/8/4 breath rest plan, instead choosing to rest based on heart rate, even that has noticeable improvement. My average hasn't changed, but the rate in which it is dropping has. I just have no good way of measuring that.

It is still probably a ways off, but I promised myself that as soon as I'm swimming 400s I can buy myself a waterproof ipod case and waterproof headphones.

700 yrds, which means I'm actually on track with my schedule instead of floundering like I was wednesday (did you know flounders are born with eyes on both sides of their bodies? one moves).

Times still not what I want, heart rate topped at 200, but it didn't hurt as much this time. I suspect Saturday will feel better than Thursday, but I suspect only by a little.

I may or may not do Saturday night (technically sunday morn). I'll see how I feel tomorrow night.

Any day of the week (not counting 4-6 hours after one of my workouts) I'll lift a heavier weight than you, move it farther, and do it with more vigor than you.

Any day of the week.

Any day of the week I'll pull up a bigger and deeper blackberry root system than you and I'll do it with a pair of gloves and nothing else.

Any day of the week.

Any day of the week I'll chop more wood than you with fewer blows.

Any day of the week.

But fuck me... you have to be dead or dying to not out-run or out-swim me. :(

I just finished swimming 600 measly yards (basically 12 sets of 50yd reps) at a whopping average of 1.2 seconds per yard. That's ... well, slow is an understatement. That's just sad. Heart rate peaked at 180 bpm (not terribly scientific there, 6 sec measurements).

It is my hope and plan to do this 3ish days a week, working up to 1650y/day over the next 6 weeks. It is looking more like 8-10 weeks based on these numbers, but my system adjusts pretty fast, so it is really just a matter of mustering what little discipline I have and getting my ass down there.

It is times like this that I wished I still had my old discipline.

P.S. I wasn't sure whether to pick something off this album (it sorta looked like swimming) or to pick Siouxsie's "Swimming Horses" (it also sorta looked like that).

1 hr picking, shoveling & raking snow & ice < 20 minutes superslow

I'm old and slow and out of (CV) shape.

Back when I was dating Kathy (read: rather domesticated) I was a butterball. Specifically I was 40% butter and floating around 250#. That's 150# of lean body mass (LBM) and 100# of lard. Back then, 260# was my "magic" number. If I crossed that I freaked and started actually changing my diet. I don't like changing my diet, so this is a big deal. Weight #s by themselves don't mean much, but I got it in my head that 260# was my threshold.

Around fall of last year I started dropping off the frequency in which I'd weigh myself. Whether it was laziness or by being roughly satisfied with my body, I don't know. I weighted myself in October at 241.0# @ 21.0% body fat. That's 190.39# LBM and 50.61 of lard. That's a fairly big change (+40# lbm -50# fat) and I was pretty happy with it. I'm a lot stronger than I was when I was dating Kathy.

I weighed myself on Tuesday... and I freaked. I weighed in at 262#, crossing that threshold I had wired in my brain. The reality is that I weighed in at 20.5% bf, putting me at 208# LBM and 54# fat. So I'm only up a couple # in fat, but up 18 # in LBM. So while I've crossed my wired threshold, I shouldn't be freaking (but I still am a bit).

I guess I have to either raise the bar or rewrite the brain to not think about this stuff this way.

I didn't stick to my plan last year too well. In fact, I sucked at it. I'm a lot stronger now, but honestly, the LBM hasn't changed all that much. I don't know physiology so I can only guess and say that the muscle cells are either now more efficient or better supported to do more work. I dunno... Regardless, my weight plan has fallen down and I need to get back on track.

I plan on eating like a pig on:

+ 2005-12-24 - xmas eve wuzzle party
+ 2005-12-31 - new years party
+ 2006-01-01 - ditto

General rules (outside of piggy days):

+ NO MORE SODA
+ NO MORE CANDY
+ As much coffee/tea/espresso in any form as I want if I make it, 2 purchased a day.
+ As much OJ as I want.
+ As many nuts as I want.
+ 6-8 meals/snacks a day from 200-400 calories, roughly. I hate counting, it don't work.
+ Yes, an espresso counts as a snack.

This is going to be hard. Now that I'm not at omni, having nutritious food around is more work and if I'm in coffee shops most of the day, it is a lot of work. I'm going to try to have small tupperware containers in my bag for a while and see how that goes.

Free day will be either Sunday if I hang with the Wuzzle crowd or Tuesday on my free ruby hacking day.

Had my first workout in 3 weeks or so. 2 of those weeks were because my trainer was on vacation. Things like that actually work out pretty well because you have extra recuperation time and your body puts that much more into it the next time. The last week was because I was sick, so I haven't felt 100% for the last week or so. I was a bit nervous about that...

Damn did it feel good / hurt like mad. I feel drained... groggy... my chest feels sunken... my legs balk at stairs (normally I bound up the escalator steps 2 at a time, this time I single stepped about 7 and had to stop).

In short, I hurt. A good hurt, but a hurt all the same. Fatigue is a lovely thing. I welcome it. It makes me feel alive.

Huh... if my calculations are right, then I've put on ~11lbs of muscle and dropped ~6 lbs of fat in the past 3 months or so. How... weird. Here I was getting frustrated with my weight until I realized that the body-fat % was dropping a not insignificant amount.