Stood up again

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Last Fri­day I had an appoint­ment with my train­er at 6 a.m. I got to the gym at around 5:15 a.m. and stretched out and did a quick run on the tread­mill while I wait­ed for him.

When he had­n’t appeared by twen­ty min­utes after six, I asked to have him called at home. There he was, sleep­ing in. He’s been late before, and he gave me a free ses­sion for being ten min­utes late recently.

So he apol­o­gized and arranged to meet me at 1 p.m. on Sun­day instead. So today I arrived at noon, in time to get my stretch­ing and warm-ups done. I saw Chris, my train­er, on the way in and waved. He waved back, so I know he saw me there too.

I only had 20 min­utes for car­dio, so I upped the inten­si­ty from my reg­u­lar runs and did two miles in six­teen min­utes plus a four-minute cooldown. Total 2.25 miles in 20 minutes.

Hav­ing fin­ished up, I went to the lock­er room to put away my music and the stretch­ing dia­grams. When I went back to the office again, he was nowhere to be seen. After pag­ing him, the desk called his cellphone.

Turns out that he thought we were meet­ing Mon­day at 1 p.m. That would­n’t work for me, since I’m work­ing tomor­row. (I’m unhap­py about that, but that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er post). So he apol­o­gized again and resched­uled for tomor­row at 6 a.m. and I went on to have a work­out with­out him.

I don’t like to waste emo­tion­al ener­gy on anger, but instead I will have to make it clear that blow­ing me off is not acceptable.

So, at least I got to the gym today. Did a lit­tle run­ning, some mis­cel­la­neous weights, and oh yeah! I swam. 12 laps, which by my cal­cu­la­tions is 1/100th of the dis­tance I need to swim to do Escape from Alca­traz next year. Good thing I have a lit­tle over sev­en­teen months to train.

Published by splicer

7 Replies to “Stood up again”

  1. I think if the pool is 25
    I think if the pool is 25 yards or even meters, you swam about 1/5th of the dis­tance. 12 laps = about 600 yards. A quar­ter mile is 440 and there are 6 quater miles in the mile and a half.

    How long did it take you? I’ve been swim­ming twice a week myself recently.

  2. Did I do my math wrong? I
    Did I do my math wrong? I was fig­ur­ing it out while rest­ing at the end of the pool, so it would­n’t sur­prise me if I slipped a dig­it or something.

    First, I was think­ing 3.5 miles. Don’t know why. 1.5 is a lot less daunt­ing. A mile and a half is a lit­tle over 2400 meters, and the pool is only 22.5 meters, or 45 meters across and back (I’ve been call­ing that a lap; don’t know what “real swim­mers” do). 12 laps is 540 meters, so wow! Yeah, that’s actu­al­ly more than a fifth. More like 2/9ths!

    Of course, There are still a num­ber of dif­fer­ences: I swim and rest and swim and rest. It’s not like I’ve cov­ered that dis­tance swim­ming direct­ly. Also, it’s gonna be cold and choppy.

    I haven’t been tim­ing myself. I’m still try­ing to learn to breathe. I’ve got­ten to where I can go a lap and a half with­out stop­ping to breathe, but I haven’t got­ten up to two laps yet. Part of my prob­lem is that I want to go fast, and that burns more oxy­gen, and I get burned out fast. Then I get pan­icked when I’m run­ning out of oxy­gen and I start push­ing hard­er, which burns the oxy­gen even faster.

    I had been breath­ing in on one side and then putting my head under and breath­ing out as fast as I could so that I could take my next breath, but I’ve been try­ing hold­ing my breath in to let my lungs have a chance to take in the oxy­gen. It seems to work best if I exhale very slow­ly and con­tin­u­ous­ly after gulp­ing in air.

    I wish I had some­one to teach me to swim. This fig­ur­ing it out myself is for the birds.

    Er. Fish, I mean.

  3. it would be a good idea to
    it would be a good idea to learn the basic crawl stroke. You don’t have to breathe every stroke. You can breathe on one side and then breathe 3 strokes lat­er on the oth­er side. Or breathe every 4 strokes on the same side. It’s real­ly about get­ting the right rhythm and the endurance will come.

    I would­n’t wor­ry about how the water is going to be in a year and half. Just work on learn­ing the prop­er swim­ming tech­nique and build­ing endurance. You won’t be as intim­i­dat­ed lat­er once you’ve got that.

  4. Yeah, I start­ed try­ing to
    Yeah, I start­ed try­ing to breathe on the oppo­site side three strokes lat­er, but as I exhale more slow­ly, I’ve been just breath­ing when­ev­er I get done exhal­ing, regard­less of the side. I want to devel­op a rhythm, but first I have to find what feels good so I can get into the right rhythm.

    And yeah, I’ve seen a lot of progress. The first time I got into the pool I did two and a half laps and stopped and my accom­plish­ment for the day was reach­ing the oth­er side with­out stop­ping for just one half lap. Yes­ter­day I did twelve laps and my best was to go a lap and a half with­out stop­ping to rest. So I’ve just got to stay with it and it’ll come. Sev­en­teen months is a long time.

    I think this year I need to do more ath­let­ic events. Like maybe a cen­tu­ry ride. And maybe B2B or some­thing. That’s a pret­ty easy run, right?

  5. Bay to Break­ers is real­ly
    Bay to Break­ers is real­ly easy.. though you can’t real­ly do much run­ning for the first mile till it spreads out. What is the date? I might be up for that too.

    I swam 1/2 mile in 19:45 today (felt great) and ran about 3.3 miles in 30 min­utes yesterday.

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