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Yet another post that I’m slapping up here – T minus TWO WEEKS!!!

Takes the Cake

Tiny Habits

I finished reading “Tiny Habits” recently. Twice. I have a lot of trouble summarizing my thoughts on this book, but I do wish that, instead of trying to berate themselves into good behavior, people would use the way our brains work to more easily develop habits that support their aspirations. And that they would worry about what they want, instead of what other people think that they should want. 

As an adult athlete who spends a lot of time with adult athletes – there’s also something huge to be said for doing what you can, and not worrying about what you can’t. Making habits tiny and achievable is a great way to deal with the slings and arrows of adult life. 

A lot of people have reviewed this book much better than I have been able to, so I’ll leave it at: Some good ideas, in a package that tended to annoy me.

Aren’t Our Brains Funny

Was singing along to “Try everything” and when I hit the lyric “I want to try, even though I could fail” out of nowhere I choked up a bit.

If you had asked me if I had any emotions around the potential to fail to swim the channel, I would have said – really not much; I’m just enjoying the whole ride. But there I was, unable to continue singing for a second.

I love that song – embracing my mistakes is aspirational for me, but it’s an aspiration I like.

“Silly Season”

I’m curious if anyone else has ever read this Heinlein story. It is terribly dated (boy did Heinlein grow with the times), but the world’s craziness (and my love of patterns) keeps making me think about it.

http://www.weylmann.com/The_Year_of_the_Jackpot.pdf

Am I losing it? Ask Steve Martin

So, I’ve needed new googles for some time. It is not entirely clear to me why I have not purchased them. They are clearly necessary, and not that expensive. I have been laying out a lot of money lately. Perhaps it’s a Steve Martin in Father of the Bride situation.

England Business (Feb 21-25)

2/19 (after last blog post) –

Finished filing travel plans with financial institutions! (Cause you don’t need to anymore 🙂 )

When I went to file a travel plan with my bank, they had a ton of useful info!

For one thing, Barclays Bank offers International Partner ATMS with fewer fees. There’s one down the road from us in Bournemouth. Yay!

You can also purchase currency in advance – we should probably have some on hand for taxis, etc. in London. 

I searched for flights through my bank’s travel center – it came up cheaper than anything else we’ve found. Good to know! Car/hotel rentals available too.

Ironically, the thing that sent me there – filing a travel plan, is no longer necessary due to the sophisticated machine learning that will be enslaving us any time now.

Confirmed travel notifications not necessary with other card either. E can check the other two.

Brainstormed packing with the kids – they are keeping it simple. (Out of laziness, I suspect, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth 🙂

Got ahold of Airvoice (after 40 minutes of holding). It is legit and I do need to order a sim card. Then call them again. Saddest face. I asked why the new sim card – they are updating all the 3G towers.

Phew – it’ll take it 7-10 days to get here – glad they didn’t tell me next month!

Still trying to nail down J’s curriculum. Meeting with A’s math teacher on Wednesday. Being even a fake teacher is a lot of work 🙂

Packing – I wondered around the house, looking for things that I use frequently. This was a pretty effective way of generating what seems like a pretty good packing list. [Update – glad I did this early. Every day I notice something I’m using that should go on the list.]

2/20 –

The great joy of going through all of the apartment rental emails and getting them filed

Tried to initiate wire transfer – don’t think it worked, but going to wait until the bank is open, rather than risk initiating two gigantic transfers

2/21 – Got through emails quickly for the first time in what seems like eons (yay!), spent a while working on J’s re-enrollment. The in-person appointment requirement is dumb, and you can quote me on that. I did some small things (wire transfer for A’s increase in school fees, for example), and checked through the Master Timeline with joy. There’s a bunch of stuff in March, but I’m giving myself a bit of rest this week – most of that stuff needs to be done closer to our departure date.

Now I’m spending a good chunk of time on our packing lists – transferring them over to notes and really trying to get everything in shape. This gives me time to order stuff we don’t have yet, and should make packing go quickly when we get down to it. 

Waiting for E to wake up to do several E things 🙂

A really productive day, and it only took me from 6:30-12:30 today 🙂

2/22 – Another productive (and thankfully less intense) morning. Followed up with the bank on the mystery wire transfer and the currency exchange. Called the hotel to request early check-in. Answered emails from swimmers and coaches. Remembered to add my massage tennis ball the the packing list 🙂 Made more copies of passports to take to my parents (and started a packing list). Corresponded with my mom about graphing calculators, etc, etc.

It felt anticlimactic, but the tenancy agreement is signed and the deposit is sent!! (Yeah, even those exclams feel dishonest to my anticlimactic state. Perhaps I should try playing Ode to Joy) 🙂

2/23 – Taking A for his checkup early, scheduling last chiropractor appointment, fighting my way through emails as usual. I did finish my final library book after waking up at 5 this morning. Everything off the list is one less thing 🙂 I’ll be talking to A’s math teacher about curriculum after his checkup. [She is so nice! She offered to meet with him virtually if we need her to – as my mom would say, what a sweetheart!]

2/24 – Forgot to record my England Business this morning. The big thing was finding a way to get J enrolled before we go – yay! Thanks much to the help of an unbureacratic bureaucrat! I did a bunch of other stuff too, but finished in time to finish off my review of “Tiny Habits” and get it posted. I returned it to the library (my last book!) and that’s another thing off of my list

2/25 – It’s amazing how the simplest email now triggers work. “Make sugarless PB cookies?” popped up in my inbox as it does every couple of Fridays, and I realized that I had no digital version of the recipes for my two most-used swimming foods. So now I do. At least things couldn’t be simpler in the age of the cloud. And I don’t have to pack a bunch of paper stuff in my suitcase. My inbox actually looks great this morning – quite a change from the incipient email meltdown I felt like I was having mid-week. I’m going to (hopefully) zip through the rest of it, and then get everything packed for the voyage of the cat. Then it’s off to the chiropractor and swimming, pick up the kids and head to wild wonderful. Weather looks good – maybe rain on Sunday.

2/26 – Weather WAS good… until the snow. And the rain. In the dark. But we made it and got everything set up. One more thing checked off the list!

The Week at the Pool (Feb 21-25)

Summary

Not a particularly good week of swimming, but, as a coach said – I’ve had some stuff going on. And if I’m going to have weeks when I’m not swimming very well, now is absolutely the time. I did a much better job of stretching this week, and I had an amazing farewell chiropractor visit on Friday, so I feel good about that.

The re-visit of shooting arm pain was weird. Chiro said it was nerve related (exactly what it felt like) and worked on it – we’ll see how it holds up next week.

I told him that my foot had cramped every single day in practice for three weeks. He worked on my feet for a few (super intense) minutes, and when I stood up I could move them in ways that I had forgotten feet COULD move. We swimmers spend a lot of time with our feet pressed out flat – turns out you can loose some dorsiflexion that way.

Dr. Williams is amazing – I felt longer in every direction after my appointment.

Pool Yardage ~ 28,800

OW Yardage ~ 0

Total Yardage ~ 28,800

The Gory Details

Monday 2/21 – Theme: Three (~4500)

I expected to feel pretty good today. I got good sleep, stretched thoroughly, and had a comparatively relaxing day of work and England prep (I even spent some time reading a book. Still a to-do list item, mind you, since it has to go back to the library before we go AND I am taking notes on it, but still easier than other to-do list stuff.)

But instead, my body did that thing where it says, “Oh, hey, we’re taking it down from 11? Fantastic! Let’s take it down to, what, three? Three sounds good.”

• 30 minutes of Age Group Champs review

• 1600 w-up (missed 400 making a note about all of my aches and pains for the chiropractor. Oh yeah, forgot about that – just like last week, when I got in the pool today, I had a shooting pain in my arm whenever I extended it in the water. I don’t even know how to describe where it is… under my bicep, toward my armpit? Last week it went away as the week went on, but, yeah, definitely want to ask the chiropractor.)

• 4x:
• 4×100 on 1:50
• 4×50 on :50
• 4×25 on :30
• 4×12.5 on :20
• IM order by round

I went very slow, and missed a couple of breast 50s during the 100s to drink. The water felt really hot, and I was painfully dehydrated-feeling. My throat and head hurt. My head still hurts.

• 300 CD

I had some time to think during Saturday’s 20×100 set, and the conclusion I came to is that 1) It’s great that I am swimming (somewhat) faster, and more importantly, injury free. My shoulders feel more stable than they have in years, doing harder workouts than I’ve done since college (especially distance-wise). And 2) I feel like I’m hitting some sort of speed wall and I don’t know why and I don’t like it.

It may be as simple as being patient (and also realizing that the last several weeks have been crazy with a capital C), or there may be something else going on. I’ll continue to look for ways to achieve the kind of speed that I want at the kind of distances that the Channel will require.

Tuesday 2/22 – Theme: Mini-Annihilation Tuesday (~10,600)

Practice 1 (~6800)

• 1600 w-up

• 2x:
• 3×200 on 2:35
• 2×400 IM on 6:15
• 600 on 8:00 (goal time round 1 – 7:30; round 2 – 7:10)
• 100 ez on 2:00

First round went well. Second round my arm started hurting, so I put on fins and tried to stretch it out.

• 30×25 w/fins on :30 – fast/ez; ez/fast
• 300 ez

Practice 2 (~3800)

• 200 ez
• 14xIM turn 25s on :40
• 100 ez
• 4×100 back on 1:50 (held 1:27’s)
• 100 ez
• 2×400 free IM on 6:30
• 3×200 free IM on 3:20
• 4×100 IM on 2:00
• Went pretty fast on these
• 100 ez
• 8 minutes vertical kicking
• 8×25 climb out walk around on 1:00
• 200 CD

After practice, I was sitting there coaching, and when I lifted my arm it was totally pain-free again. I have no idea what’s going on. Hopefully chiro will know.

Wednesday 2/23 – Theme: Macon Strikes Back (~5200)

• 500 loosen
• 14×50 sprint progression on 1:00
• 200 ez

• 2x:
• 4×25 on :30 lowest stroke count
• 3×50 descend on 1:05
• 3×50 1 ez/2 fast on 1:10
• 3×50 fast on 1:15
• (30 seconds extra between each)

The idea was to try to maintain your stroke count while swimming fast. This is exactly what I need to work on. I had kind of mixed results, but basically stayed in the 12/13 range, going about :38’s on the not fast and :36 on the fast. Definitely an improvement over not working on it at all.

• 200 ez

• 3x:
• 25 kick on :30
• 25 kick/25 swim on 1:00
• 25 kick/50 swim on 1:30
• 25 kick/75 swim on 2:00

Kick were fast. Boy my legs were shot after the fist two sets

• 200 ez

• 12×100
• 1 – 8 kicks, 7/8 strokes
• 2- 6 kicks, 9/10 strokes
• 3 – 4 kicks, 11/12 strokes 
• 4 – all out
• On 1:45, all out on 2:00

Only ones I could do were the 4 kicks. The more fly kicks I do off the walls, the more strokes I take.

Fast were 1:14, 1:12, 1:14, trying to hold low stroke count (13-14)

• 300 CD

My arm started doing the weird hurty thing again during the kick, of all things.

Thursday 2/24 – Theme: Macon gets another shot at us (~6000)

There is never enough warm-up for me when we join the senior group. Basically, we do a 500 and then join them in progress. I won’t be sad that this was probably the last time for that particular joy. But anything hard is Channel prep, if looked at the right way.

• 500 loosen (missed a hundred – tying suit, etc.)

• 2x:
• 300 on 4:15
• 2×150 on 2:00
• 3×100 on 1:15
• 100 ez on 2:00

Went fine – held 1:11s on 100s, I think

• 100 ez

• 2x:
• 1×25 on :30
• 75 on 1:10
• 2×25 on :35
• 75
• 3×25 on :40
• 75
• 4×25 on :45
• 50 ez
• 50 from the blocks, 2 groups. (There wasn’t space for me the first round, so I skipped it. On the second round, alas, there was. I dragged in a 50 backstroke in :36. Sigh.)

• 225 ez

We were encouraged not to breath on the :25s – I took 1 or no breaths. (That was pretty tough – breath control has not been my focus.) I focused on new stroke and held :16s and :17s with a stroke count of 13-14

• 6×100 on 1:45 – odd 50k/50s; even 50d/50s

• 2x:
• 100 kick on 2:00
• 3×50 kick on 1:00
• 100 kick on 2:00
• 100 ez on 2:00

I did the 100s free kick with a board, and was happy to go a 1:45 on one of them. I did the 50s fly kick on my back, going :49s and :50s. Slight foot cramp, but got over it quick.

• 300 CD

Friday 2/25 – Theme: My First Masters Practice in Months (~2500)

• 200 w-up (got in late coming from chiropractors)
• 4xdirty thirties (a lot more doable when I’m not tired)

• 4x:
• 150 no turns
• 100 swim
• 75 variable speed
• 50 build
• 25 sprint
• 50 ez

Went free/back/free/breast. Went :36’s on the build 50’s that felt pretty good. 1:29 on the breast 100. 1:16’s on the free 100s

• 300 CD

A good loosen before getting in the car for 6 hours