I’ve been very antsy lately because the running is so curtailed, so opting out of another bike, swimming was the only logical choice. Beside the activity itself, swimming is a whole body massage. Slow or fast, it does a body good, in my case just another therapy for my Achilles (which never hurt this swim session). Even when I swam with the swim team last fall, Coach Judy’s brutal sessions left my body feeling light and fluid (even though I was trashed).
Today was fantastic 
. Again, just an easy 750 yards to get the feel for the water after 3 months off. A warm up, 4 times 50Yards on 2 minutes, and a 100 yard easy to see what I could do: 1:27 minute. I felt so refreshed after, it was the perfect training for today (my Achilles loved it too)!
So again, I find myself at a crossroads. I’m 2 months into my run phase, dealing with a little road bump, yet I really feel the calling to start biking and swimming both for conditioning and to treat the Achilles. So what do I do? I was thinking about that all the way home today.
I noticed that while biking the other day, the left knee was tighter than the right, and while it didn’t hurt at all, there was a pulling sensation so both knees aren’t the same. Besides getting my legs stronger, I think the left can benefit moving through a different pattern than running. I’m striving for symmetry of motion and feeling, so I think there’s still more room to grease the wheels.
I suspect I really should be training in all 3 disciplines within the individual phases. That said, I still plan to dedicate 1 day exclusively to running, and the next day to super easy training for the bike and swim. The 3rd day will be off to recuperate and mend, meaning I’d run every 4th day. This I think, makes sense while I get rid of this little bump in the road. This is more conducive than running every other day as I have been.
Because I haven’t been training as usual in the past 9 days, my weight ballooned up to 179.3 this morning. I had a few drinks one night, ate late the next, and had pizza the following. It was rather amazing how the caliper readings kept pace with the scale. This morning’s reading was a solid 16mm. I had to do a little 24 hour intervention to bring it all back to a satisfactory point; it will be there tomorrow morning.
I plan to continue this schedule until my next 5k on the 15th of March. I’ll reevaluate my training based on how I come through that race. It will have been 2 months to the day since my last race. I’m in much better shape cardiovascularly, it really all depends on how the hardware holds up.
For some reason, the last 2 days of training weren’t recorded off my Garmin, so I’ll be entering the sessions manually, no map, no stats. I didn’t post about the last run and bike sessions, but you can find them on my Garmin page. Swimming is always a manual upload as my Garmin is not waterproof, something I’ll change in my next model.
Well, it’s a constant reevaluation in view of all the hiccups. I’m off to ice my Achilles.
Thanks for reading, Claude