Round these parts...

It has been chaos in my little life. But things are just going all crazy and not much I can do about it but hang on for a crazy ride.

I had a pretty awesome weekend of training. I had a really awesome ride on Saturday. The group I went out with I was new-er to the group as I had only been out with some of these people (OK one of this group) the week before. So I had no idea where on the riding spectrum I would fall. We headed out and somehow I found myself with the 'fast cats'. Oh crap was my thought. But I did hold their pace for most of the ride and near the end when I started to fade a little, they kicked it back a notch so I didn't completely fall off the bandwagon, which I totally appreciated. I had a great ride and enjoyed the day.

Sunday I pounded through a 8 mile run that really was supposed to be 9 miles. Parts of it sucked like no other, but i think part is just reminding myself how to run on tired legs. That can be a bigger mental exercise than an actual physical one...especially when it is warm.

Total success on monday...i dragged my butt back to masters...woohoo...it was pretty funny though because there were 3 lanes. The REALLY fast lane, the FASTER lane and then my lane. (YES me with my spastic puppy swimming) The first two lanes were made up of people who actually knew the drills the coach was talking about and then there was me and my lane who contained a variety of knowledge, I won't speak for the other three people in my lane, but it didn't seem like there was whole lot of drill knowledge between the four of us on anything but freestyle. And considering we were doing 100m IM sets...only being familiar with freestyle drills only gets you 1/4 of the way through these things. So there was a lot of: What does she mean by that? Um...what? I'm just going to do freestyle. Now granted in undergrad I did take two semesters of 'swim class' so I'm not a complete newbie to doing drills and such, but but that was...gasp...over 10ish years ago when I actually took those classes. So this was me during the class:

Uh...what is the order of the strokes?

Uh...what if you can't actually DO the butterfly? (For the record...I do more of a butterflop) And you want me to do WHAT without choking on the water? And after explanation of one of the drills...this what went through MY head: how exactly am I to do a dolphin kick with breast stroke arms and not find myself at the bottom of the pool?

Uh...what do you mean by a breast stroke drill?Practice the leg part on my back? (what is this lady talking about)

Uh...backstroke drill? You mean you actually want me to do the backstroke in a straight line and not hit the other 3 people in my lane. Funny lady.

By the end of all our IM drills, I actually did attempt to do the butterfly for a couple of the 25m...one time I was doing actually ok (granted it was more of a moth than a butterfly...but the flailing did seem to be in the correct timing of the stroke) and THEN my calf cramped up and I nearly drown. So I went back to flopping around in the water. I think in total I made it once about halfway down the lane before I started to hyperventilate.

I was just happy I made it back to masters without coming up with a zillion excuses. YEA...swimming goal at the moment is to go to masters once a week and an open water swim once a week. I'm just trying to swim more and not worry too much about my pathetic slow nature in the water. Consistent swimming will help, even just increased endurance in swimming will help with my speed. I just need to get to the water on a consistent basis.