No TLC (technique, but luckily cardio) swim

I swam at 10:00am again this morning (still have Fridays off). There were a lot more people in the pool this time and I think it distracted me a little because I felt that my technique wasn't quite on. I felt great cardiovascularly though, so overall it was a good swim. I did my regular workout again. I think I'll wait to bump up on things until Wendy coaches me again. I did do 4 laps of kicking though, I had been having a 'challenge' in getting past two laps. Its kind of like running though. In running, for me anyway, the first ten minutes feel great, the second 10-20 minutes is no fun at all, but by 45 minutes or so I feel like I can run forever. In kicking, the first lap feels great, the second - my legs rebel fervently, but halfway through the third lap I start feeling like I could kick until the salmon come home. Did the sauna afterwards again too. Nice.

Leaning rower to please her

Tonight I worked primarily on my shoulders being back in the saddle, Laura says I still ride too forward...sounds easy, but there were lots of variables that made the task at hand a little more interesting. I had to use Laura's dressage saddle because someone else had the jumping saddle. No big deal, but I'd gotten pretty used to the extra knee padding on the jumping saddle. Generally, the stirrups in the dressage saddle are set lower than they would be in a jumping saddle, but Laura had me taken them down another full notch to force me to use my calves while posting. So...a very different feel all around. Things went pretty well though. I was please with my balance, but the shoulders back thing was pretty challenging...then Laura asked me to lean even farther back. I had to visualize myself at the release point in rowing to force my body to stay back enough. Apparently it worked though as several people in the bard said that my post was looking very good. The canter seemed to be a breeze tonight, I think the lean back really helped it. The transitions went well too. Laura says more poles and even crossbars are not too far off.

Swim: plan B

I was all set to try out a couple new drill in my swimming this morning. But...since I had the day off I planned on having some breakfast and then going in for the lap swim around 11:00am. After about 4 laps in, I realized that the workout I had in mind just wasn't going to happen. My body was in breakfast digestion mode and wasn't willing to share too much energy with my arms and legs. So, I came up with a plan B. Nothing spectacular, just stuck with my usual workout. I did try to work on breathing and rotation tips that I picked up from some articles I read over the weekend. Also tried to push my strokes during the kneeboard-no-handpaddle section; got down to 16 strokes. For the legs portion I did try some new drills...I did kicking lengths on my right side, then back, then left side, then front to help encourage full rotation when I'm doing the full crawl. The side and back kick left me pretty tired but well worked.

File frenzy

Spent Saturday morning organizing my stacks of articles on sports and nutrition topics. I get Triathlete magazine and others occasionally on swimming, running, rowing, etc. Discovered I had some good stuff on workouts for swimming and running. I'll start putting these into practice on Monday. Spent the rest of the day outside, in the yard and at the Arboretum, celebrating Earth Day.

Nothin but crawl

As planned, did and endurance/long distance swim this morning. I swam 40 laps straight, just stopping to put my hand paddles on in the second set of 10 laps. I was swimming at about 70% speed and effort, so didn't have a problem maintaining a comfortable breathing rhythm through the whole swim. Afterward, spent some time in the sauna...very relaxing and it took me back to the time I spent in Estonia, doing saunas the real way...sauna, cold shower, beer...sauna, cold shower, beer and so on.

Morning weights, evening gates

Did my upper body weights workout this morning. I did go up in weight on several of the lifts, so was pretty happy. I'm going to look for some weight routines that will help with the pentathlon events, swimming in particular.

I picked up my orthotics this afternoon, so soon I'll be running. I also had some (...this is probably more than you ever wanted to know about an athletes real world issues but...) plantar warts medicated which means I won't be running for at least another couple weeks, BUT I'M GETTING THERE!

Had a great night riding tonight. The transitions from trot to canter are getting much better. Laura had me do a drill where I take my feet out of the stirrups and try to maintain my post...not as easy as one would think, you have to really work at holding the horse with our calves rather than your legs. But, the drill did improve my post. The other thing I worked on was going from canter to two-point and back, maintaining the canter through the whole drill. It wasn't perfect, but by the end I was doing pretty well. Pet still has his little quirks, but working through them will teach me a lot.

Pushing water

For this morning's swim I really concentrated a lot on the final part of my stroke, an area the Wendy said I need to work on. Its the last 3/4 of the stroke at the end of the "s" shape, including the final flick with the hand, that I tried to focus on...what I call the "push" I was pretty lax on the warm up but I started in on the "push" with my pyramid. Its pretty obvious that the push makes a lot of difference in my speed through the water as I was able to get the number of strokes it takes to get across the pool down to about 17 (down from 20-21 when I'm just warming up). During my hand paddle and knee board laps, I did a regular push down and then a strong push on the way back. I ended up with 2 few strokes on the hard push, around 17 again. I'm pretty pleased with this, but eventually I need to get my stroke count down by several more strokes. I'm still working on getting my hands to be in the right position when entering the water, Wendy should have some good tips next time we meet...probably in May.

Sun swim, fun fence

Did my full swim workout today. Felt like I was at about 95%...I seemed to be a little fatigued on laps 9 and 10 of whatever I was doing and my legs didn't want to add another lap at all. It was the first time that the sun has shined while I was swimming though so the pool was very bright and it really helped energize me. After updating my pentathlon page yesterday, I realize I still have a long way to go in all my events. The Portuguese pentathlon site has a lot of great swim workouts, so I may try to add in some of these soon. I also have collected all my triathlon articles on swimming and running and will try to incorporate these too.

Its been a couple weeks since I last fenced, so it was great to get back. Arrived in time to do the footwork and then fenced Anne Telles. She is so much fun to fence! Then I had a lesson with Garik. Worked mainly on point control and going for the openings. I still tend to over think things. Also worked on some disengages and distance. Anne and Bill came up with a great "name your pentathlon" that I've put up on my pentathlon fun page.

Swim so long

Since I have Fridays this month, I slept in and went swimming at 10:00am. The pool was almost empty, so it was nice to not have to worry about running into other swimmers. Didn't have any time worries either, so was able to do my full workout:

10 laps warm-up
6 lap pyramid
10 laps with knee board and hand paddles
10 laps with just knee board
4 laps kicking
two lap warm-down
Felt pretty good through the whole thing so I will be adding some different drills and one day of just a long distance swim. Think its time for coach Wendy to pay a visit too.

Leg lugging and saddle seat

Did legs this morning in my weight training. Once again, started with same weight I used...LAST OCTOBER!...when I last did weights. Legs went pretty well and I did a bit of an arm workout too. I noticed in lunges that my right leg lasted a lot longer than my left. Must be a side effect from fencing...hopefully the weights will even it out.

Had a major breakthrough in riding tonight. Worked a lot on trot/canter transitions again, particularly on making it a smooth transition. Not perfect yet, I need to work on my body position when I ask for the canter, but its getting much better. The breakthrough was staying back in my saddle at canter. I have a bad habit of leaning forward especially in the turns. I was finally able to sit back, keep Pet under control at the canter. This allowed my to take a lot of pressure of the stirrups which surprisingly also solved the problem of my boot getting too far back in the stirrup or occasionally even falling out. I was able to keep a light pressure on the stirrup and maintain a great canter...all while keeping good upper body, knee and hand position. YES!

Smaller swim

I was still a little sore this morning, so did about 3/4 of my usual swim. 8 laps warm up, first two segments of the pyramid and 8 laps each with paddles and freestyle with knee board. Should be back up to the full swim on Friday and ready to start building from there.

Eeoowwe!

Way to sore to do any swimming today. I guess I went a little overboard on the weights. No fencing tonight either since I can't lift my arms above my shoulders without great amounts of pain. Should be back to the swim on Wednesday.

A strong Sean

I have Fridays off in April so, after watching Laura ride at the barn for a while to get some good riding visual images, I decided to do a little weight lifting. My last weights entry in my journal was last October...yikes. I'll probably do weights 3 days a week, switching off between uppper and lower body. Gym time went pretty well, so we'll see how my muscles feel in a couple days.

Pet, poles, and frogs

It was pet again tonight. The trot came pretty quickly tonight after a little work correcting my shoulders and reign grip again. We went back to trotting over poles (six of them) tonight to start working up to jumping. Pet's very good at avoiding the poles, but after a few rounds of forcing him to walk through them after he avoided we were doing well. We then started going to canter when coming out of the poles, and various lengths after the poles (so that Pet would assume we would always go to a canter after the poles). Laura caught that my canter commands were too strong again so I worked a lot on giving softer canter commands, including just thinking it to make it happen. Voila! It took a lot of work to keep Pet under control, rythem wise, at both the canter and the trot following the canter. But it did happen. Afterwards, I spent a little down time just listening to the frogs singing outside the barn. Its times like that when I miss farm life back in Nebraska.

On a side note, Laura is still trying to get me to line my helmet with a certain "feminine hygene product" since I sweat like crazy and my helmut has a definite "athletic" smell. We'll see about this.