Update and Stuff

I woke up this morning feeling better then I have in a couple of days. I have been dealing with a cold that just won't go away. On top of that, I must have slept wrong a couple of nights ago and I woke up with a very sore back. Also I have been dealing with this foot/ankle/tendon pain for the past 4 or 5 days. But I am happy to report that my back is feeling better, the cold is gone and my ankle/foot/tendon is feeling much better. I still plan on taking it easy on my foot and not run for a few more days. I will probably test it out this weekend sometime.

Onto the swim today. Since I am a beginner swimmer, I don't know if I am should stretch before I jump in the pool. I do stretch my arms, shoulders and back alittle, but thats it. Should I do more? There is this one guy in the pool that all I see him do is swing his arms around and hit them against his legs. Apperantly he is the master swim coach for the Y so I guess he knows what he is doing. So I jump in the pool today and I had the lane to myself, oh wait here comes another swimmer, guess I'll have to share. At this time of the day, around 10:30 AM there is 1 lap lane, 1 swim excersise area and an open swim area. At 10:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday there is an older adult excersise class in one of the open areas. Today there was probably 18 people in the class. I started to do my warmup 50's and the class started their warmup group circle walk. Well let me tell you, that if you want to practice swimming in currents, come swim at 10:30 at the Y in Wakefield, RI. When they start walking in the circle, it creates a whirlpool effect in the entire pool. So for instance my first 25 meters down was really fast and then on the way back, at a certain point it felt like I wasn't going anywhere. The swimmer sharing the lane with me noticed the same thing and I told her it only lasts about 5 minutes. I was done with my warmup laps and decided to hold off on my drills until after the water calmed down a little. The one cool thing about swimming during the class time is the the instructor has music going which is great to listen too while doing a long set.

The whole swimming thing is getting better every time I swim. I was reading Ironmin's blog yesterday and she scheduled tests this week in all 3 sports to set benchmarks for herself and to look back months from now and see how much she has improved. Well I decided to do the same thing but only for swimming today. I figured I would set a mark for 250 meters since thats about the distance for the 8th Annual Triathlon by the Sea swim, time - 5mins 35 secs. I think I left myself some room for improvement. That is really slow compared to some of the times I have seen from last year race. I also did an all out 50 meter swim, Time - 57secs. So these are my marks that I will break in the coming weeks and months. I will test myself once a month just to see how things are going.

Happy Hump Day!