Birds and Cats

Easy: Ahhhhh... Finally a swim after 2 days of "drought". Training went well IMHO except for the lack of some training resources. The delivery of my presentation package was very well received by the attendees.

It was rather gloomy today. As I was doing elem back, I saw several birds flying over the pool in pairs and I thought what if these birds poop on me while I was facing the sky? Come to think of it, I haven't seen bird poop floating on the pool. Or maybe it sinks? Or it dissolves in the pool water fast? Yuck.

As I surfaced from one end of the pool today, I saw a cat sitting at the other end. Don't know where it came from. It wasn't dirty so maybe it wasn't a stray cat. Just found it funny that it was like waiting for something in the water. Like a fish to scoop, maybe? When I got to the other end, it was intently watching me maybe trying to figure out WHAT I was with goggles and all! Ah well, I just left it alone.

My poor old towel was disintegrating beyond all recognition so today I got to use my spanking new blue towel. That's it on the left still sealed in its plastic pouch. The tube at the left is where you roll it up and put in. Imagine, I got this at 40% off from Php775! Hope Arena goes on sale again coz I'm buying more! Maybe to prevent stains, it'll be better to scrub the skin regularly with pumice stone or whatever. It takes time, but it's probly worth it.

Did stationary flipturns today. Don't know, just did them out of the blue and they were good! I much straighter now than any of the turns I did in the past. I only managed 5 though coz I was getting a sinus headache. On my way out, I was given my new ID card for my renewed yearly membership - another year of swimming and freebies.

Body Pains

Easy: Am still feeling body pains and I've been taking Diclofenac yesterday. I'm kinda regretting the all-out "workout" over the weekend. Today they were chlorinating the pool. By the time I started, only about a fourth of the pool was green. I found it difficult to recover and was breathing rather heavily. It must be the chlorine gas, my fatigue or both. I was outta there before 8am. The water will chlorine-green for a while so I may need to pass on tomorrow's swim. Arrgghhh!!! Noooooooo!!! Well anyway, at least this'll give me time to finish up and rehearse on the script for my first ever training on BrioQuery.

The 3 small leftover bars of soap (yeah, I'm cheap, I only use leftover soap from the house) melted into a goop at the bottom of my soap sealbox. I didn't notice unusual weather yesterday although it did rain cats-and-dogs later in the afternoon. I'm out of eardrops and cologne, so will replenish.

Something interesting I read from Alicat at the USMS forum was a neat trick on visualization:

"Blast from the imagination past: I used to pretend I set off a bomb and swim really fast to the other side to get away. Hey, swimming can get pretty boring after the 10,000 flip turn!"

More Wood

Easy: Much too tired to do a double. Besides, I got a wound from yesterday's wood chopping/ splitting activities. I didn't want the wound to soak too much. I felt the wound everytime I would stroke with the left. How tired was I? When I slept last night, even DH felt my body twitch everywhere! But it would be definitely the last firewood collecting/ chopping/ splitting weekend for quite some time. It's hard work(out).

The pile at the left and the sack behind it is the chopped wood taken from the park. Some of the branches are a little dry and they could be cut by a little chop and then breaking. The first time we collected the branches there were small black ants and big red fire ants. Ironically it was the black ants whose bites were more painful and itchy. And no, these aren't the black ants of the sugar-bowl variety. These are small but "macho" kick-ass black ants.

This pile is the wood already sawn into firewood size. The branches girth varied from half inch to 3 inches in diameter. I had to wear gloves to prevent blisters while using the metal hacksaw. Sawing the wood, ugh, there's the workout for the right tricep! I was sweating buckets. No sense wearing a shirt for this activity.

The pile on the left is the split wood. Although some of the wood are becoming dry, some were rather fresh judging from the pith which was colored green. That's why they're laid out like this for drying in the sun.

A Complete Workweek

Deasy-L: Amazing, I just realized that I've completed a whole week of swimming! Okay, make THAT a workweek. But still, I think it's a first. In the past, I was preoccupied with the notion of 3x a week, or alternate days, or a day's rest here and there. But now that I've listed my only 3 possible justification for not swimming, I shouldn't have any other excuse. Heck, I just learned from one of the videos I downloaded that Michael Phelps trains 7 days for the whole year, birthdays and Christmas included - or so he claimed. But I guess he wouldn't be where he's now were it not for the mucho time he spends in the water.

I revived the side stretches today in the pool and it felt goooood. I've not done ththose stretches for a long time and I felt the stretch in my lats. Makes me think how valuable it is after all.

Tattered Towel

Deasy: Was sweating when I came to the office today from the morning swim. But it was a good feeling. I don't turn on the aircon nowadays especially with the relatively cooler weather. I only turn it on when there's heavy traffic on the way to the office.

I noticed that my first Arena Sports Towel is starting to fall apart. There's now a big tear 3 inches long and there are other smaller tears and holes. Has it been a year? I've had this towel since (hold on while I search the archives)... Yup, been more than a year. I've used it since July16 of last year and has served me very very well. I just don't know if the way I washed it recently contributed to its decay. It's been getting stubborn stains lately and I used bleach to remove them. The instructions clearly prohibits it though. Here's what I did to remove the stains and make it spotless:

1. Wash the towel well with detergent - no scrubbing, just wringing.
2. Leave the towel to soak in the soapy water for a day.
3. Rinse it well.
4. Soak the towel in water with 2 tablespoons of bleach for a day.
5. Rinse well and aerate in the shade.
6. Roll it up and put it back in the tube.
7. Pour a little vinegar in the center or core of the towel.

I modified the wrestling move I described a few months ago so it'll look ultra cool.

• Do NOT touch/ grab the deck or wall to support you.
• Push water down with both arms simultaneously to pull body forward and bend back.
• Raise your legs simultaneously so that the top of the knees break the surface. You'll need to ensure a lungful of air so the head doesn't sink.

Felt sleepy all afternoon today. I was up until midnight last night reading these articles/ blogs about migration.

Take It Slow

Deasy: It's still cold in the mornings especially when I wake up. But nopes, no more excuses! As MTS sez, think of the outcomes, the payoffs. Think positive not negative. The water's cool and one thing I did yesterday was to dunk my head a couple of times to acclimatize with the water before starting the laps. Maybe I should do that everyday.

Doing Deasy everyday is a doable. I just have to put my mind to it and not overly rush the laps. Today, I was more relaxed albeit slower on the second TEP. No rush, no tensing of muscles, no wild gasping for air, even. I thought that was refreshing. The first relaxed lap even felt like I was just lazily stroking the right arm as if I just depended on the turning of the body to propel myself ala a screwdriver. Maybe that's the core muscles at work. Whatever it was, I want to do that again coz it was much easier to go thru the laps. Reserve the wham-bam, gungho, furious stroking on some other day perhaps.

Tomorrow I'll park farther from where I park now. Those workers at the resort (mostly for the bottled water business) have the makeshift basketball goal up again. Trouble is, the goal is rather near the spot where I presently park my car, meaning near enough for the ball to hit the car. Especially now that that court is rebuilt, those guys are huffy-puffy again on playing. It's too close for comfort, so I'll just move. I don't know what's with those guys, they play bball, pretend to swim and then smoke big-time. Some jerk even smokes in the shower room. I know it's the rainy season and biz is slow, but still.

I found a nice quote from a USMS particpant (Guvnah) on blocking out distractions at the pool. It was a reply to an overweight guy who was insecure about other people's opinions and thought that Guvnah's pool was empty:

"Actually, it's often pretty full. Two people per lane, one on each side of the line. What I was saying is that for me, nobody else matters. (Unless they swim into me or into my space!) Just block them out and focus on your own zone, your own workout. Is the guy (or gal) in the next lane swimming twice as fast as I am? Good for them! I don't change my workout to keep up. Block them out. Do your own thing. That's all."

Unsymmetrical Again

Partial DEasy or TEPTE: I'm getting the habit of not rotating enough again. The left arm doesn't clear the waterline enough and it felt like splashing too much water. I rotated automatically and the left arm clears when my head turned with the body though. I gotta remember that. I used the thigh and groin(?) muscles more for the Paddle today. It felt that way coz that's where I felt the slight tiredness. Maybe this will save the knees more.

It may be a fluke but elemback today's count was only 8! To streamline myself, I put my palms on my front thighs. On the medz front, I forgot to take Pritor (my anti-hypertension drug). Good thing I always keep some spare tabs in the car. I'm a bit apprehensive to workout if I didn't take it. What if my BP spikes? A coronary situation in the pool isn't a pretty sight. I gotta think of a way to take this first thing in the morning. Take it with my tall glass of water? with coffee? put it on the dinner table the night before?

I've downloaded lots of videos today from fan sites. Interestingly, there are plenty of Aussie videos (Thorpe and Hackett) to download from various fansites around. When you search for US videos, most of the sites (not fansites) ask for money. Luckily I found one fansite for Phelps. I'll put all these on a cd later. These will keep me happy and inspired for the next few days.