Swimming

One of my former students is a lifeguard at the Blacksburg Aquatic Center and when I ran into her there the other day, she challenged me to reconsider my approach to swimming, which is pretty straight-forward and boring - to swim a mile (36 back-and-forth laps). Swimming is not a regular part of my routine, but I've gotten to the pool a few times lately in the hopes that it will give my sore foot a break.

She explained that there is a whole range of other swim-fitness possibilities out there! She participated in the Blacksburg's Aquatic Center's Master's Swimming program and highly recommended it, but I don't have the time or desire to add to an already full schedule! But, through a SparkPeople swimming group, I found a free website called swimplan.com that not only constructs swimming plans, it actually includes the instructions for what each exercise is - key for a novice such as me. You can select the strokes and equipment. I like free and breast. Never learned butterfly and hate how in backstroke you can't see where you are going or when you are about to hit the wall! It concocted a great plan. I printed it, encased it in a ziplock baggie, and off I went. It was a great program and having it there in black and white (rather than in my head) meant no cheating or slacking.

20 x 200s

Today I ran 20 x 200m (1/2 a track lap) with 200m recoveries. I didn't realize until after I did some research that the 400m lane is typically the inner-most lane; I thought it would be the middle lane and I ran there with cones to help me consistently time things. Anyway, I wore my new Garmin watch which gave me average pace per interval. I wonder how accurate it is on those short distances? I forgot to wear the HR monitor and will do that next time. I posted this run online.

Garmin Forerunner 405 Review

Robert got me the Garmin Forerunner 405 running watch/GPS system that provides the ULTIMATE in logging, tracking, charting. This thing has more bells and whistles than I've had a chance to uncover.

Check out the stats from the family walk: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/1603266.

It took some time to get it up and running since the first thing I managed to do was to change the language setting to some kind of Slavic dialect which made it pretty challenging to follow the English directions to change it back! But now it's very cool. I'm using the most basic functions initially. I just press "training" then "start" and eventually "stop". When I get back to the computer, the watch communicates to the computer via a wireless USB stick. The info is downloaded to the resident application or you can chose to upload it to Garmin's site and make it public.

Things work in the other direction, too. I can program in a specific running workout on the computer, upload it to the watch, and go from there.

Now if I could just program it to deliver a small electric shock when I am about to reach for one of the many, MANY holiday distractions like cookies, cakes, muffins, cheesy things, fatty thing, alcoholic things, etc. Next week, back to logging food on Spark People. I'm ready for some needed discipline in the food department.

No running for five days

No running until Saturday. Ice, low impact XT, get over this inconvenience and move on.

I watched Without Limits today (thanks JRP) about Steve Prefontaine - a history-making distance runner who died tragically at age 24. Wow. It takes amazing focus, confidence, and pain tolerance to achieve what he did.

I also dabbled in a book about a guy who ran across the US. The scary thing is that I asked myself if, in my wildest dreams, I thought I could do that. My thought was yes.

Tennis

I don't write much in here about tennis, primarily because it's not something that lends itself to being measured, counted, gauged, or tracked. But this blog has become my filing cabinet for organizing all things related to fitness and tennis is a big part of that.

I play on average 2x/week in the winter - doubles and a group clinic and/or private lesson. I started tennis in earnest almost two years ago. A year ago we got a great pro at Blacksburg Country Club, Bill Woods, who has elevated tennis for the whole BCC crew. He brings great energy and tremendous patience.

Take-aways from recent lessons:

• slice: lead with butt of racket, finish short, karaoke step to get shoulder turned and low, moving forward through shot.
• slice serve: toss to the right, hit on outside of ball, target more to middle since ball naturally goes left.
• topspin serve: back of ball from 8 to 2 o'clock
  
• serve: step forward into court, less rotation.
  
• groundstrokes: spin (always), close racquet face some and sweep up over, finish the shot, don't get too close to ball, head stays down, hit deep
  
• volleys - squeeze racket firmly, step into ball
  
• small steps, on toes
• overhead - turn, keep left hand up, don't get too far under the ball
  
• drop shot