Beetsdown Training Week Two

Week Two of my Beetsdown training is in the books, and it was a good one. I feel a little guilty because Randy Beets has been ill and his swimming has been curtailed. But I still have to train. He is a young man and can rebound quickly. Believe it or not, I wish him well and have been praying for his recovery.


Agility ladders on a pond levee.

Having to work Friday, I was hampered from doing everything I wanted. Forced to make tough choices, I picked lifting weights and running. I went back to my old lifting routine. The new routine is one I still believe in, just not when I am in full build mode. I'll go back to it after the Suck when it is too cold to swim outdoors or to swim far outdoors. I have long found it odd that I swim very well the day after a tough upper body lifting session. But when I split my routine, doing push one day and pull the next, and lifted the same day as I swam, my swimming tanked. I find it difficult to lift and then swim. I cannot swim and then lift due to the mosquito problem a Plate City Gym.

Saturday I went to the pond after lifting (full upper body) and running Friday the day before. As usual, my muscles felt stiff and sore. With running that always means a bad jog. But as usual, my swim was great. I am really interested in knowing why that is the case. Just thinking about it, the only thing I can come up with is maybe it involves muscle fiber recruitment. It could be that the weights wake up some of those fibers that were starting to sleep during my swims.

At the pond, I set up a couple of agility ladders, some dumbbells, a barbell, a kettlebell, and some cones in various spots for a circuit workout between swim sets. I had a good time and worked the whole body. The lifting was light and didn't seem to hinder the swims. I did laps followed by the dryland circuit which was 1.35 miles long. Randy Beets and I used to do this sort of thing back in the day. Now I have to do it alone, but that is OK. Besides Randy, when it comes to working out at the pond, I am the best company I have ever had.



Dumbbells on the levee

For the week, I

ran 12.95 miles,
swam 22,822 meters,
walked 3.9 miles, and
lifted weights two times (counting the Saturday pond circuit).

It is now Monday, August 18, and school proper began this morning. I like the look of the three classes I met today. The I now face the challenge, however, of adjusting to my new schedule and surviving this first week. Since I have to keep extra office hours during week one of each semester, the opening of a school term presents challenges to a marathon swimmer. I will survive. That's what marathoners do.