The ups and downs of February

 February - an interesting month

Sad to admit, it has been a bit of a pants month with regards to training. I set out with the plan of doing about 15 - 20km swimming a week,interspersed with Walks and pilates.

Well we are at the end now and I have not not got anywhere near where I was hoping to get with my training and I am really beating myself up about it, to the extent that it is affecting most my life. It  seems that something is wrong as I have been called up on my highly negative attitude, reflected in my facebook posts, by many of my great friends.It is very comforting to know I have so many AMAZING friends, without you slapping me into shape, I would not be who I am.

My Mind is just not in it right now and I have been told that I should just give it a rest for a while. The reason I am trying to push myself really hard is that I have a 3 week holiday coming up in April where, although I might do a bit of training, it will not nearly be enough. I am trying to get my fitness up as quickly as possible and maybe that is not the right thing for me right now.
On this note, to ad to my frustration, I have purchased my wife and I tickets to Africa only to see them go on bloody sale a week later, losing out on about £400. I then bought myself a new watch online, only for that to go on sale 3 days later.

Moral

I need to work on my procrastination skills

I am usually brilliant at this

 

It has also been suggested that I should find someone to train with. If anyone knows of anyone who swims at about 4km an hour and is keen to do about 5 - 8km sets and lives in the Sutton area then please make yourself known. Most my masters class are not up to that sort of speed or distance right now although they are a great bunch and enjoy haveing me push them,and I love swimming with them,I need someone to push me. I will look around and see what I can find

Another suggestion is to find a coach. I am not to keen on this idea as I have never had a coach and, as I have learned over my life, I am not a good listener. This is the reason I have steered clear of them in the past. Also, I have, probably stupidly, believed that if someone wants to coach me they need to have done the distance I am planning on doing.

This week however has not been all bad. I had a great 3.5km swim on saturday morning with my waterpolo Friend who pushes me way past my ability. But he can only swim on Saturdays and after about 1.5km he done. All very understandable as he does not have to worry about endurance, only speed, so his sets reflect that.

This was followed by 6km walk around Wimbledon Common which was great to be outside.

Monday was a very good 5.2km swim set and my times are improving, doing 500m in 7 min 6 seconds. A whole 24 seconds faster than I was expecting to do. I can only attribute this Increase in speed to my pilates and better core strenght because, it cannot be due to my swimming training.

Tuesday was a good pilates session

Wednesday was a good 5.1 km set and my times are still surprisingly faster than they should be.

Tonight I am taking a bit of time out but When I am not training I am thinking. This is a bad thing.

Tomorrow I will try to head to the pool and also Saturday I will be swimming and then walking,with some work thrown in so it is not all bad, just not where I was hoping to be. One thing that I am surprised at is my speed at the moment. Lets just hope that the endurance will come

Well, As March approaches I aim to try to do things a bit differently. I will Go to another masters class for one evening a week, see what they have to offer in the way of professional Swimmers or triathletes to push me a bit. I have not really considered myself to be a fast swimmer and I do know Many other people who would push me hard, sadly they are nowhere near where I live so I would not be able to meet up with them regularly.

I am also longing for the time when the Lakes open for swimming, hammering out 200 lengths for me is becoming a bit tedious and when I am not having fun I am a very Grumpy person as some of my friends have discovered, to their detriment.

I hope you enjoy reading this and some of you might even be able to understand where I am coming from, because I don't.

Happy reading

The Battle of the sofa vs the Gym/Pool

It has now been about three weeks since my last post and there are several excuses that I could bore you with but they are just that. EXCUSES!!!  Most of them being valid but others just come down to Bone Idleness.

To say the training has been going to schedule would be a blatant LIE. It has been up the swanny for the last three weeks. I have been battling with a bit of a tickly throat and have not really been on schedule to do my 5Km sets in February. In the first week I was fine, 5km on Monday, wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I was quite proud of myself and thought my training was going pretty much according to plan. One Saturday My Wife, Roberta and I went off to try and tackle Box Hill, as a walk. It was a Lovely day which enticed me to wear Shorts and T-Shirt and Trainers --- not taking too much notice that it was about 2 degrees outside. We all had a lovely walk and the climb was pretty brutal. But we did it.

I think this is where the wheels started to fall off my training. We then went out for a birthday in the evening, stood around outside near the fire, had a great night, albeit a bit chilly. Sunday is when the wheels really fell off the training wagon. My wife woke up with a terrible throat infection which put her in bed for the next two days. After seeing that she was alright The dilemma hit me - HEAD TO THE POOL FOR A 5KM SWIM OR PLANT MY FAT BACKSIDE ON THE SOFA AND WASTE MY LIFE?????   THE SOFA WON!!

The following week was a bit of a disaster with regards to training only clocking up a mere 10km the whole week. I might have been suffering with a bit of a tickly throat, but not bad enough to warrant me not popping in at the gym on the way home, considering I have to drive right past it to get to my house. I headed to the gym on the Saturday morning, the anticipation of doing about 5km - which is the standard set that I want to achieve through the month of February. All was going well for about the first 500m. At about this time a Friend of mine joined me in the pool. As he is a waterpolo player, his sets are pretty short but VERY intense and fast. I decided that I would do his set with him and then carry on with my set.

After doing a further 1800m with him, we finished his set. He left the pool and I contemplated carrying on. I was just so shattered that I had to call it a day and just stick to very casual laps, commonly referred to as Garbage yadage, to finish off with a poultry, and very disappointing 3km for the day. total for the week, 13km.

We are now at 19th of February and I have done about 30km this month so far. Not good considering that I should be on about 45Km at this point.

Okay, Even though people have this perception that I might be a fairly accomplished endurance athlete, I still really struggle in this "Battle of  the sofa vs the gym/pool." Many people believe that just because I TRY to maintain a modicum of fitness and appear to be fit, it comes easy to me. PLEASE DO NOT BE FOOLED. The mental battle I have to go through each and every time I need to excercise is immense. It sometimes lasts for about half an hour or more and often The Gym/pool loses. I do not consider myself an accomplished athlete, I have recently come up with a perfect summation of where, and what I am. 

I am a TRY-athlete

I suppose it is better than being a Triathlete.

Well The above rant is there to highlight the fact that not everyone can take on a big challenge without GOALS, the big Goal being the ultimate, made up of many little Goals along the way, then throw in a level of DIFFICULTY, mix in a bit of FOCUS. You then have the ingredients to ACHIEVE. The one further thing that is needed, in bundles, is COMMITMENT. This key element is where I am seriously lacking right now.

The joy about life is that all this is in the past, I can't change that. What is ahead of me is plenty of Opportunity, and this is where I can make a difference.

Now let us focus on a few of the good things. This last weekend I joined up with my whoareem of ladies all training to take on a 50km walk later this year. We all met at Great Windsor park to do a 12km walk as part of their training. Roberta, Audra and Julie galloped off into the distance leaving my wife and I to plod along behind. We were planning on cutting some of the walk off and meeting the galloping gazelles at the end.Sadly all the paths that we tried to take, to cut off some of the walk, were private access so we plodded around the full 12km and managed to finish. Very proud of me and excetionally proud of my wife for doing this. I can't say I have walked 12 km in the last 5 years. Don't think my wife has ever done it. That's what cars are for!!

We have also done a few shorter walks as part of their training. My pilates is going well and my core strength is improving

My times in the pool are pretty good and consistent. I have adopted as part of my sets 5 x 200m follwed by 5 x 100m followed by 5 x 50m (1 length slow 1 lenght sprint)

My target time for 200m is 3 minutes and I can consistently hammer these out on 2 min 45 seconds

My target time for 100m is 1 min 30 seconds and I consistently do these on 1 min 20 seconds

My target time for 50m is 50 seconds and I consistently do these on 45 seconds.

My aim (little goal) is to do this as my main set 5 times back to back which will equate to

8750m plus a warm up and cool down.

Other positive things that I have been focusing on is getting the Extreme5challenge off the gound again in a much reduced fashion but we will start small and see where it goes.

Our trip to Africa for three weeks is booked so we are looking forward to that, Got a bit fleeced on the tickets. This is the first time where my amazing ability of procrastination would have paid off. After purchasing our tickets - on my wifes very sound advice that they will go up, which is the usual case. A week after buying them they went on sale and we ended up paying about £380 more than we could have got them for. I still don't advocate the use of Procrastination - although I am pretty dam good at it.

I then heard that My brother and his family will also be flying out at the same time as us. It will be the first time My immediate family have been together in about 4 years so definitely looking forward to that.

Hope you found this post both interesting and entertaining and I will try and grasp the opportunities in the future to be a lot more active on this blog both for your benefit and mine.

Stay well Dream Big