Catch up and first triple in a while

Whoops, its been a while since I updated my journal. With housesitting and all, I've been pretty busy.

I've had some OK workouts here and there over the past week or so, nothing spectacular. I just started back up running and swimming since my back had been giving me some problems for a while. Both fencing and swimming have been down a notch since I started in on lessons, but that was to be expected. Still not Daisy airgun yet. Finally, didn't do any riding during the Thanksgiving week. But now I'm back on track and focused as ever to try and get ready for the pentathlon clinic/camp I'll be attending in late December in San Antonio.

I did have my first triple in a while today. The swim actually felt pretty good...finally. I'm getting better at the turns Ed had me work on, just push turns for now. Getting a little better at the butterfly and back stroke too, but nothing to brag about yet. I hope to hook up with Ed once a week or so.

I did a little better in fencing tonight compared to most of last week. I do think it is mostly due to the club epee I'm using since my blade snapped last week. The club epee doesn't record my touches very well and the tip is bent in a weird way. I also discovered tonight that the blade is a lot more flexible than what I'm used to which is probably why my point control is not what it used to be.

Finally, I did a half hour interval run on the shores of Lk. Washington where I'm housesitting for the Robbins. Its has been a week or so since I did a full on run, so it will take a few runs to get back up to where I was before. But my new shoes feel pretty good so far.

First coached swim, new running shoes and fencing push

I finally hooked up with Ed from Salmon Bay swim club this afternoon. He liked my stroke overall - especially my hip motion - but started the long path of working on the details of my stroke and strategy. He corrected a small issue with my hand entry right away then we started work on my turns. We did push-offs at this point with the intent of getting the push right, then we'll start the flip turn later. By the end of the lesson I added about four feet to my push off and probably took about 4 seconds off my time. I still need to streamline a little better off the wall, but that's just a flexibility issue more than anything...getting my big rower's body to do really squeeze in off the wall. It will happen though.

After the swim I went up to the The Foot Zone to get my next running shoe. I think my eight month old shoes were part of the back and foot problems I've been having. The Foot Zone is one of the best places in Seattle to find outdoor and athletic shoes and clothing. I was really impressed with their video setup...they video tape you running on a machine to figure out which shoe is best for you depending on your running style. I got the Saucony Grid Web and some new active orthotics. It felt great, I can't wait to really put the new shoes to the test. Dick and Bonnie Robbins are sponsoring my running shoes, so a BIG thanks to them.

Finally, another fencing lesson. This time Allen had me work on pushing the blade. I still am trying to muscle the blade more than finesse it. By the end of the lesson I was doning OK, not overdoing it both in strength and motion, but it took a while to get there.

Fencing: new threads, new toy box

I slept through my swim time today...my alarm didn't go off. Whoops. But because I was home so late in the afternoon, I was around when my new fencing uniform arrived as well as the hard golf case in which I will put all my pentathlon stuff when I travel. My dentist, Dr. Cherberg, being an enthusiastic golfer and supporter, sponsored the golf case so a BIG thanks to him.

Fencing went pretty well tonight, I did very well against several people, not so well against others. Interestingly, I did better against the higher level people. I had great point control and did well with complex attacks too.

I just need get two new weapons (you have to have at least two working weapons for tournaments) and my name on my uniform and I'm ready to start competing!

A short but good swim

Finally made it back to the pool today after giving my back a rest for a few days. I don't think swimming would have bothered it that much, but I didn't want to take any chances. It felt really good to get in the water and get stretched out again. I only swam for about 45 minutes or so and did my old workout. I wasn't swimming as fast as would have liked, but it was good enough for now.

More yoga, more Salmon watching

My back still felt a little tweaked so, after a visit to the chiropractor, I decided not to do my long run this afternoon. Instead, I took a nap and looked forward to my yoga class tonight which would either prove difficult because of my back or feel really good...it felt really good. Breathing, opening up the rib cage, stretching, etc. all felt really great.

After yoga, I scooted over to the Queen Anne pool to hang out with the Salmon Bay swim club again. I'm still not swimming with them due to space-in-the-pool reasons, but I did get some more pointers and got the workout to do later. Once again, Ed gave me some really good pointers. We're going to try and meet up on Tuesday for my initial private lesson to get me started with the club.

Two nine and climbing

Pet and I had to spend a little time working on a bad habit of his...cutting corners. Once we got it worked out, we had a really great jumping lesson. I did a lot better with hands and body position and made it all the way up to 2'9" easily. I also did a lot more jumps from a canter which rally built up my confidence.

Running in circles and the best fencing lesson ever

Didn't do any horse riding today, with fall/winter upon us it was time to clip the horses so I spent the afternoon helping out with this.

I met up with a friend for dinner so didn't go to the Club Northwest training practice tonight. Instead, I wanted to try to run Portage Bay (PB) again since my run yesterday wasn't all that great. Had the same issue tonight though, my lower back fatigued very quickly. So rather than do intervals, I just did a steady state run around PB. I felt pretty good by the end of the run, but am still wondering why my back is giving me problems all of a sudden. Could it be new shoe time already?

Had a really great fencing lesson tonight. We worked on flesches, which is a skill I've been too chicken to try, always get hit with from my opponents and have always wanted to learn. Basically, its a pretty aggressive attack in which you jump/strike at your opponent and then run by them. I had to do a lot of slow motion attempts, but did get it eventually. Can't wait to try it in a real bout. Now I just need to learn how to defend against the crazy things.

Weekend report

It was a busy weekend for administrative pentathlon kind of stuff. A lecture on Crane conservation at the zoo on interrupted my evening training on Friday. I spent Saturday morning trying to organize my office at home and hoping that my Daisy airgun would arrive in time for a 2:00pm shoot time...it didn't. I did go to the range to meet up with Pam though. Turns out she was just doing a drive by as well as she and her husband were waiting for a tractor to be delivered at home. But I did get some pictures to post of Pam on our NW Pentathlon website.

We had a dinner/annual meeting/awards ceremony at Laura's house in Monroe. It was really great to finally gather all of Hilltop's students together. Rather than her usual beef bonanza, Laura put on a Pennsylvania Dutch dinner (the parents did most of the cooking this time). The dinner was fantastic! After dinner we talked about what was going on at the barn and Laura handed out her "awards" which were more gag gifts than awards, but it was fun. I also got a chance to meet up with Josh, a Pony Club member interested in pentathlon. I showed him my Australia pictures, talked about getting started up and made plans for me to hand off some of my old fencing equipment to him on Sunday.

I did my best to catch up with Salmon Bay swim club on Sunday, but neglected to read their website. Apparently there was a pool change and I was at a loss to find them. I tried Queen Anne pool, Ballard pool and Madison pool, their usual haunts. No luck. Found out the next day they were at the Metger Evans pool at Seattle University. I need to be more diligent about checking the site.

Met up with Josh at Hilltop to hand off my old fencing helmet and foils to get him started. I'm pretty excited to get him up and running, the more juniors the better.

Pet Step jumping

Had a great night jumping with Pet Step tonight. The trot and canter felt better than ever and the transitions went well too. We started jumping with crossrails, moved quickly to a vertical and finally graduated to an oxer. My real oxer jump! My only problem tonight was being confident and in control at the same time...I couldn't seem to get them both to happen together very often. This was primarily due to the fact that Pet was a little hot tonight, he had a little buck in him and he was very strong out of the fences. So, I spent a lot of time and energy keeping him under control, as soon as I did it was time to jump again and I felt a little unprepared...well at least not as prepared as I wanted to be. By the end of the night things were going smoothly though. With the right signals, Pet settled a bit and our last five jumps were picture perfect.

The Vesty challenge, more cross country and busy feet fencing

I had the usual problems riding Vesty this afternoon. He's a stinker at the start...he likes to over react to my commands and balance and just is an all around pill for the first 5-10 minutes or our ride. But with some confidence and a whip I think Vesty and I are starting to come to a better understanding. Generally, a tap with the whip will give him a little surge and get him out of his lazy funk. This time, I gave him a little more whip and from that point on he was perfect and I didn't have to use the whip again. Not only did the canter feel awesome, the canter transitions were the best I've had on Vesty.

I did pretty well at the cross country tonight. My times weren't all that incredible (my fastest mile being a 6:16) but I was pleased that I did do almost all of the workout that the full group did. That practice was 4 x 800 at tempo pace, 2 x 800 at 5k race pace and then 4 x 200 'strides' (building up to a full sprint over the distance). I did all but the two 800s at the 5k pace. Watching the other runners in the group fly by is inspiration for me to try harder and gives me constant visuals for where I need to get to.

Humbled again at fencing lessons. My main problem in these lessons continue to be that I'm doing too much. I want to keep moving my feet and arms and shoulders when it is not required of me. These things are great in bouts, but in the lessons, they are baggage. Its kind of like a horse doing dressage, you only need and should do what the coach asks of you. It took me a while to really focus enough to get rid of the extraneous motions, but I eventually did and seemed to break through a wall as far as finding, giving and taking openings. Alan's doing a great job of breaking down my bad habits and really making me focus at the task at hand.

Pam, another prospective pentathlete in training was there taking here fist foil lessons. We chatted a bit and made plans to meet up on Saturday to shoot new Daisy air pistols that will hopefully arrive in time.

Picking Daisies, PB pb stands and fencing zen

I ordered up my first gun today. No, not the fancy Steyr LP5 that I eventually want to get, rather a Daisy 747 air pistol. Yes Daisy, very likely the same company that made your first BB gun back when you were a kid. Although all of the pros have told me to go straight to the Steyr, I've noticed they all started with Daisies. Since the Daisy is about a tenth of the cost to get started, I decided to start just like everybody else. The Daisy will allow me to get the basics down, then move up to the Steyr in a few months when I will need and appreciate the fine tuning the Steyr offers. The Daisy has also won several competitions, so it won't be all that bad. And I figure it won't hurt having some extra airguns around for potential pentathletes that may just want to try it out. The gun should arrive on Thursday or Friday.

I hit the same time as last time for my Portage Bay run today. I'm happy with the time because I really wasn't warmed up all that well compared to last time when I had just come off a swim. I've bumped my 'on' interval up to a minute thirty seconds so should see times come down a little for the next month again.

At fencing tonight I really concentrated on stating relaxed and in the position Alan wants me to stay at, which is basically the en guarde or six position. I won two and lost two bouts. I did do very well against Clarke though when I stayed very relaxed and just let him come into me. I decided that I do want to get different uniform material though, my current Uhlmann doesn't have much stretch to it.

More Salmon watching, a wet run and another good swim

I started the day by watching another Salmon Bay swim practice. I wanted to catch up with Ed to set a time to get some private training, as well as get their workout so that I could try it later on. Hopefully Ed and I will meet up on Thursday and I put the workout into practice later this afternoon, but not before my long run.

I did my long run (which I was supposed to do on Friday) today right before lunch. Nothing too spectacular about the run, it was at a medium pace with the intent only to run for an hour. It did start pouring rain in the last ten minutes though. Yuk. I came in about a minute and a half before my full 60 minutes. I felt good the whole run so will probably start adding a little more time each run going forward. Back to speed workouts on Monday.

Had a really good swim today. I got almost all of the way through the Salmon Bay workout. The warm up was a 600 swim, a 3x 100 kick and a 4 x 75 IM. The IM was slow and pretty sloppy, but I did it (with the one handed version of the butterfly). The workout consisted of 10 x 200s, one as a pull, the next as a hard swim and so on. I did five of these. I think I could have done all ten, but I wanted to get to the shoe store in time to try on some shoes. Turned out they were already closed. Regardless, I was pretty happy with the swim. I even did a little better at the backstroke.

The good swim

I didn't end up swimming with Salmon Bay on Friday since I hadn't had a chance to meet up with Ed yet for some personal training, I wasn't in any rush to get in and make a fool of myself on the backstroke and butterfly. I did have a great swim today though. I was able to do about three quarters of the Salmon Bay workout...finally. Still working up to their full workout though. I did some attempts at butterfly that felt pretty good (just a one armed version with kick).

First shots fired and more jumping faster

Today, I took my first shots with an air pistol...a pretty major milestone. I was actually trying out a Steyr LP5 that belonged to a gentlemen I was referred to from Pilkington Competition Equipment. John is a great guy. Not only did he let me use his gun, he gave me lots of pointers for my first shots. I didn't do too bad, I got 4 out of 7 shots in the black circle. But it really made me want to get my shooting going. And now I know that eventually I will buy a Steyr for sure. I may end up going for a Daisy for a while. Remember the BB gun you had as a kid, it was probably made by Daisy. The Daisy air pistol is about a tenth of the cost of the Steyr I will buy, but at least the Daisy will get me started - and - I've been told that people have wond some competitions with the Daisy.

Had another good jumping night with Pet tonight. Had the same old issues of him being really strong out of the jumps, but overall had a really good session. I do need to work a lot on keeping my shoulders up during and after the jump, but Laura gave me a good visual for this so I should be able to correct it quickly. Pet seems to want to jump the fences higher than he needs to...maybe we need to raise the fence.

Better swim and caught 22

The swim felt a little better today. My technique felt a little better and I was able to set and reach some small goals in time and finishing the workout I intended. If all goes well, Friday is the big day for starting to swim with Salmon Bay.

The run at Greenlake went really well. I felt great through the whole run and ended up with a 21:36, my fastest time around Greenlake by 10 seconds. I still have a lot of time to chip away, but boy does if feel good to dig in on this one. The sub 22 has been eluding me since my return from Sydney, but I finally got it! Its amazing how accomplishing such small goals boosts your confidence...I'm ready to push for the next goal.