Steering back into the groove

Thur. 1-31-08

Back in the pool. I mean, BACK IN THE POOL!!

Triumph #1 - Beating back the strong desire to go back to sleep when the alarm went off at 5a. 18F on the Cougar-ometer at oh-5-40 didn’t scare me back indoors. Sliding into bed and getting to sleep would have been sooooo easy.

Triumph #2 - Surviving the swim session, staying relatively "on", not just going through the motions to finish a set.

Best of all: no noise from the high chest strain, finally!

Form wasn't as terrible as I feared, I'm still far from sprouting gills, and fitness is ugly. If the effort was anything but very easy it quickly felt hard. Fortunately, coach went easy on us. I wasn't the only one returning to the water after a layoff.

200warm up
2x50 drills of each, all w/zoomers: side swim, 1 arm, stroke and glide, catch-up
500 free hard w/zoomers
500 free steady no zoomers
3x25 very easy
1x25 hard

Evening - Bike
1hr20mins on the trainer. Just riding. A little standing and a little pushing the effort now and then. My attempt to ease the legs back into things.

Fri. 1-4-08
Run steady 60mins, ~7.8-8mi, feeling a bit more like a runner, not quite back to form or HR:pace tho.
Upper 20's, crisp.
15mins core.

How about Obama and Huckabee in Iowa?
The high turnout pleases me greatly. Might there be hope for a record (respectable) percentage of eligible voters to get out to the polls in November?

On to Oh-Eight

The cats are doing just fine, keeping the help in line for another year.

How about that strong family finish to '07: Welcome to Taran! Will Taran get shortened? To "T"? Tary? Plenty of time to sort that out. Well done and good luck to parents P & N.

Thanks to the folks who sent the annual update holiday cards. How can you be so busy and still put together the update letter? Maybe I'll hop on Craigslist, find a future ex and have a couple kids so I have some good material for an oh-8 Christmas update.

Dorothy Z. sounds great, apparently still on top of her game in Vegas, taking down the one-armed bandits and who knows what else. What happens in Vegas....

Word through the grapevine of other items of interest including tai chi mastery out West and thoughts of corn roasting in '08.

There's a new Capo at the helm of the East Coast Soup Mafia, flexing his soup muscle and kitchen control out at the Devereaux cat ranch/high end knitting factory. Giving truly is receiving when the gift is a french cooking lesson. That lead to great soup for the Nov. - Dec. holiday run. But no soup for the NY's eve meal. Instead, Indian - Vindaloo.


For the first time since Thanksgiving my health is coming around. I can swim! Well, I can find water and thrash from one end of the lane to the other without chest/shoulder pain. Looking forward to getting back to coached group swim sessions every Tue & Thur. Five weeks of inactivity has added 10-12lbs to the pale whiteness that is my belly and 10 beats per min to my HR. With the atrophied muscle and rusty parts I feel like raw pizza dough thrown over an old shopping cart, the one with the shaky, dragging wheel.