Week 5 (Saturday) Swimming Etc

Swimming lesson again this morning!

8am I rocked up, rearing to go!  I remembered not to eat heavily before going so I had eaten 2 peices of toast with a slight smidgeon of butter and my cuppa at 7am. 

I jumped in for my swim, relishing the fact that it was sunny and NOT windy!  The water was just nice - a little chilly at first but perfect after 30secs of adjustment!  My first warm up lap I just waded and kept my head up and then freestyle back.  I had to do a few laps before I managed to get a full 25m lap without stopping.  It seems to take a bit for my lungs to warm up.  Then after half an hour we switched to breaststroke and I was quite happy that I was getting comfortable with it and making it about half way down the pool before stopping.  Then Mon says 'a full lap please'!  lol My head said 'no way' but I had a crack at it anyway.  Lo and behold, I did it!  So I can now do a full lap of breaststroke. 

While I was on a high I was told to do a couple of laps of freestyle and of course they seemed easy the breaststroke and although I had a break between laps, I managed two in a row without stopping.  I do have to watch my legs as I tend to bend them to kick myself out of the water when I breathe, which of course makes it harder to breathe! lol

I am learning to do butterfly kicking now and I had four laps with the kickboard.  Towards the end I changed from thinking that I was moving like a dolphin to moving like a mermaid and it seemed a bit easier then! So from now on I will be picturing Arial moving through the water in "The little Mermaid" as my focus for my butterfly kicking - much more graceful then a human pretending to be a dolphin (aka Rob Schneider in "The Animal").

I finished up with another lap of freestyle  and then just a bit of relaxing and chatting before heading off.  I am always sad at the end of the lesson and today I am also very sore!  My crappy eating this week has drained my energy resources and I am really feeling it!  My legs and my shoulders are aching already with my tummy muscles also complaining a little by playing with my digestive tract (lol it makes me burp!) and of course, my nose is now running like a tap in spite of taking my hayfever meds this morning!

But it is oh so worth it!

And now to get to work with my due date a week away!  I spent last night fixing up my graphs which I will finish off now, and then on to the final work on my lit review.  I will send that off tonight and before bed I will go through my discussion and do a quick re-structure.  Tomorrows focus will be getting what I have done complete and working on doing a another lot of correlations.

OH, and today, at lunch time, I need to pop up and get my race pack for tomorrow morning!  yey!


Heading off to start my work now!  Catch you all tomorrow with an update from my run!

A quick update before I head off to bed!  I have my running bib and shoe tag for tomorrows run which I am hugely excited about but I am even more pleased to say that I finally got my lit review done and dusted and sent off for final edits!  So happy.  Just my discussion left to do now so I will start that once I finish my run!  Sigh, now to pack up my huge pile of research papers (I have like 550 papers printed out - no wonder I have run out of ink a hundred times this year! lol) and get my bed ready for sleeping!  yey!

Jeni

It's a Super Saturday... FLOP!

Normally, right now, I would posting about my adventures learning to swim but alas today is a flop.  It is POURING, not just raining... POURING!  So I took the opportunity to get out early for my grocery shop which is always a good thing given the overcrowding at our local shopping centre on a Saturday morning!  Being early and raining meant it was 'normal' at 9am but my 10am, by gosh it was getting busy!  So glad to be heading out and not in, at that time!

So I don't know if my run will be on this afternoon, storms are predicted so I figure it will only get worse.  I might just get in and do some sparkpeople 10min cardio vids and see how I go (the jumping one is a killer!)!

Now, due to rain, I've been unable to get my 1km time trial done so I am going to do what I should have done anyway (because it is more in line with my goals) and take my mins/km run speed from my last run from runkeeper.  It breaks up my run into each kilometer and the time it took to run it which is really convenient for this!  In the absence of a better option I feel this is what I shall have to do!

On a brighter note... scales this morning said 58.2kg!  whoo whoot!

Food Diary:

egg on toast
yogurt (1/2 serve) with blueberries and strawberries!

jarrah hot chocolatte with about 30mL of physical milk added

wrap with corn relish, lettuce, 40g chicken, leftover cottage cheese, 1 roma tomato and some lebanese cucumber.

billabong icecream (80cals.. wtf?  Awesomeness)

ministrone soup is cooking for dinner tonight (via slow cooker)!

.... which I have now eaten with a piece of parmasan bread (aka sizzler bread!).
another hot choc and a mini tin of baked beans at about 10pm as I was up watching a movie!

Exercise.. I ended up going for my run as the rain had eased to spitting by 4pm.  I did the 45mins minimum recommended for today and managed a nice 6km in that time!  I just cruised along today too so I am pretty impressed... 374 calories burnt in 47mins!

Swimming Lesson No 3

Well today sucked!

I rode my bike in and I must have been worn out - I think only 2 laps I made it the whole way and I was so upset with myself.  I'm gonna have to join up so I can practice more often.

Important Numbers though...

My first super saturday....

in 2hrs I have done 30mins bike, 1hr swimming and 30mins bike.
A whopping 633calories!

And I still have my run to do later today!

UPDATE:

Went for my run and it was fantastic!  Seemed so easy after the last week of building up.

42mins inc. 5min warm-up walk. 7.64km/hr avg speed
HRM: 46mins and 342 calories

So total it up and todays Cal out = 975.  Damn close to 1000cal for the day!

Swimming Lesson No. 2

I had my second swimming lesson and all I did was laps!  I think I swam about 20 laps and I now know that I just need to practice.  Out of those laps, probably about 5 of them I managed to swim the whole length without stopping.

What I have learnt though, is that I stop myself from doing it.  I think 'I am doing it wrong', or 'I can't breathe' even though I am doing fine.  I'm not doing my breathing perfectly, I am taking too long to do it because I am not letting all the air out under the water so while my head is out I have to breathe out and catch my breath as well.  By then my arm is pointing down and I have to use up all my energy to keep my head up long enough to take my breath!  No wonder my arms are killing me!  I will get there though, I just need to relax and just concentrate on improving a little at a time.  Rome wasn't built in a day and I am not giving up! 

I did wear my HRM as well - and yes, the Polar FT4 is waterproof - and it was great!  I didnt' get my heart rate up very high which makes sense given it was the breathing I am struggling with and not the endurance side of things, and I was also resting between each lap to calm my breathing.  Still, in the hour I was in the pool I managed to burn off 240 calories!  My heart rate average was only 105bpm with a max of 135bpm so even from that you can see I took it pretty easy. 

Next week I will keep with the swimming each lap and I am pretty sure M is going to try and get me to do a couple of laps without stopping for a break in between!  As she said, when I can do two or three laps, then a single lap will seem easy peasy!   I wish I could pop in and practice in the pool once or twice during the week so I could surprise her next Saturday!

I am so proud of my progress so far. 
And so happy that I took the plunge and booked that first lesson.  I just know it won't be long until I 'graduate' to just swimming laps!

My first swimming lesson!

I've broken the 'I can't swim barrier' and managed to swim a full length of the pool without stopping.  Okay, so it was only once out of about 10 or so attempts, but I did it!

So I rocked up at the sports center 20mins early after scoffing down some oats and strawberries.  No-one was there!  10mins later Monika turns up on her bike (so wish I had a bike - no excuse, I am on the same block as the uni for pete's sake!) and we introduce ourselves while we sit and wait for campus security to unlock the gate.  They turn up right on 8.30am to let us in!
So we both stripped off down to our swimmers, discussing swimming caps and goggles - I decided to pass on wearing my new cap as it makes my face look constipated, but decide to try the goggles (I keep going to type googles so if I miss one in the edit feel free to laugh at me!).
The pool is nicely heated - its not cold but its not warm either (I hate pools that feel like pee temperature!) and we are all alone - Yey!  No-one to watch me flounder around!
First task of the day was 4 laps on the kickboard to 'warm up'.  Holy shit!  Who needs to swim when just kicking down the pool with a kickboard is such a work-out!  My thighs were burning half way up the first length and my lovely friendly swim instructor turned in my evil swimming coach!  Apparently I can't learn to breath properly while swimming if I am puffing and panting because I am so unfit!  So much for my nice 'easy' swimming lesson!
Now to be fair, Monika gave me lots of positive encouragement - my kicking is lovely, she says she gets lots of adult learners who tend to cycle their legs.  Yey for me!  I mentioned how I 'stagnated' at the lessons at school because I was too short to touch in the 3ft depth of the 'big pool' and fear meant I wouldn't let anyone let go of me.  I got lots of instruction on kicking, stroke, floating, etc but nothing could get me to breath!
Next step was 'lets see your freestyle' - ahhh.. I can't swim a whole length... that's fine, just go as far as you can.  So I swam three strokes, took a breath, swam three strokes and floundered.  I have a good technique with my arms for a beginner!  Yey! 

So we went back to the kickboard for a few laps to practice breathing.  Once I made it a full 25m without trying to drown myself, I went minus the kickboard.  First go off the bat.... I made it the whole way up without stopping!  Of course the next few laps I tried I ended up stopping.  I figured out what I was doing wrong technique wise and would try again... but I just seem to have this huge mental block.  I go along fine, make one small mistake, and bammo - my headspace goes and I stop.

I listened to myself the last run - 'I'm not doing it right' 'I'm out of breathe' 'I'm not going to make it'

It's all in my head!

Now just as an after thought - my stomach muscles are killing me.  I know I have them now at least, but only shit, I feel like I am going to die from the agony!
I need to get visine - the googles didn't work out too well and put me off.

And just on a funny note - I had forgotten how much I burp in the pool! lol