December 13, 2007

Thursday, December 13, 2007
There’s another nor’easter today. It’s a traditional coastal nor’easter, though, so my son Matt, at UNH in Durham, is seeing a lot more snow than I am. But we got about 4 inches, mostly over a 2-3 hour period, so it was coming down pretty heavy while it was coming down. Which was during the precise period I was driving to the pool. Big deal.
Today seemed like a good day for a bit of a tempo workout, as much as I can in the pool. I feel that, after a good month of training, I’m finally in good enough shape so that I’m not exhausted by the time I get warmed up. 500 m warmup, 3 x 500 m tempo effort w/100 m easy between, 500 m cooldown. 9:30, 9:42, 9:48. Total distance 2700 m. I would have been happy to do another 500 easy, but 1500 m at tempo pace was enough for me. Sometime in the next week or so I’m going to fit in that 5k swim. Mostly easy, but not all. It should be fun.
I tried to check my hr after each rep. After the first one I got 110, so I tried to kick more during the next two. It messed up my mechanics and efficiency went way down, but at least I got the hr up to 125. I figure it dropped about 10 bpm by the time I was able to get a reading, but now I know why I’ve felt so relaxed while swimming lately; I’ve probably done at least half my swimming at about 90 bpm. A couple months ago I could hit 90 bpm by eating a sandwich. At least now I’m fit enough to swim hard enough to get the ole pulse up to decent rate. I’m also beginning to recall, from long ago, how much harder it is to get the heart rate up by swimming. It’s why swimmers do 100 sprints every day.
Uh-oh, I think I made a mistake. Roy Tuller’s yearbook quote was “A man’s a man who looks a man right between the eyes.” I think it was Frank Farance who said “He who gazes at the stars is at the mercy of the puddles in the road.” I can see my yearbook from where I sit, but am far too lazy to actually check. Maybe tomorrow. Hi Frank! Hi Roy! Leave a comment and let me know if I remember correctly.