My Triathlon Adventure

This Sunday I planned to do a mini-mini-triathlon to prepare for my upcoming mini-triathlon.  I think that’s right, you know what I mean.  Anyway, the plan was to do my normal spin routine, get off and run 2 miles on the treadmill, and then do some swimming.  No real target on the swimming, I just wanted to have my sister-in-law watch my form to make sure I was keeping it correctly while I was breathing.  I just figured out how to breath while swimming, and I wanted to make sure I was as close as I could be to the correct form.

Well, 3/4 of the way through the spin session my knee started to hurt.  I’m not sure why, I think maybe I wasn’t tight enough into the pedals, or maybe my seat was in the wrong place.  Anyway, the pain wasn’t too bad so I kept going.  I got off and did my run, did the swim, and by the time I got home my knee was in pretty bad shape.  The pain is in the back of my knee, so I’m not too worried that it is serious, but I’ll have to give it some time to heal before killing it again.

In terms of the workout, however, I think I did fairly well.  I did about 17 miles during a particularly brutal spinning session.  Did the 2 miles at 5.5 MPH with just one break in the middle, and did about 380 yards of swimming.   Turns out my swimming form wasn’t too bad as I took each breath, now I need to work on bilateral breathing.

I was proud of my performance today.  Considering how new I am to this.  If my knee hadn’t of gotten injured, it would have been just about perfect.

My goal for next time is to do the full two mile run without stopping, and to build my swim endurance.  I am still mostly doing one length at a time.

Went swimming with my sister-in-law. I was doing my Easy Freestyle drills, skating, and the life guard came up to me and said, “what are you doing?” I was taken a bit off guard, and I wasn’t sure if he was reprimanding me or what, so I just looked at him and said, “Um, I’m swimming.” Suddenly I realized he was just curious about my drills. I corrected myself and told him about the Total Immersion drills I was doing. He had heard about them but didn’t know much more than that. Anyway, I swam for about an hour and I started feeling really sick. I’m not sure if it was the bobbing in the pool, or the blur from the goggles, but I felt pretty sick by the time it was all done. The drive home was miserable. I need to figure out how to prevent this or my triathlon career is going to be cut really short.

The drills themselves didn’t go too bad, but I just want to be able to swim. Apparently I have very little patience for swimming, who knew?

I have been sick all day today, I looked up some sites on motion sickness while swimming.  One post mentioned physical therapy helped with motion sickness.  I didn’t even know they could do that.  I’ll have to look into it one day.  I hate motion sickness, and I really want to enjoy swimming.   I hear ginger helps with nausea, I’ll look for some ginger chews or maybe I’ll buy some fresh ginger to eat when I get home.  Ugh.

Literally.

I had a practice session today.  I tried doing some of the drills from the Swimming Made Easy Total Immersion book.  Things went ok, I guess.  I really don’t feel like I am making much progress because the drills seem to be baby steps.  They are also designed for a shallow pool.  As a result, I found myself struggling to breath at times when the water was too deep to stand in.  I did learn to roll on my back whenever things got too intense and I needed a breather.   I just roll over and float there.  I can even get some forward progress by doing a backstroke.  I’m thinking that this will be useful in a triathlon if I get into trouble.  I read recently in the USA Triathlon’s rules that you can rest while swimming (Rule 4.1) , however if you use anything like a boat or another person to give you forward momentum you will be disqualified(Rules 4.2 and 4.3).  What?  I’m a lawyer, let me geek out.

Now, about the sickness.  I am really, really, sensitive to motion sickness.  In fact, I am so sensitive, that I have periodically gotten motion sickness while driving my own car.  Today I got nauseous while swimming.   It really upset me.  I don’t want to have to take Dramamine every time I want to swim.  I felt terrible too, I barely made it home without throwing up.  In fact, I had to drive with the window down in freezing cold weather just to keep from losing it.  I am still feeling sick as I write this in fact.  Hopefully it was a one time thing. Ugh!