Self-punishing and Getting Good

I trained. I trained yesterday. I did more than one thing. Thank you God.

First, I went out for an ambulation, which at this stage of my comeback is a mixture of walking and shuffling. What I did was:

W- .72
R- 1.01
W- .73
R- .14
W- .32
total foot miles = 2.92

Walking in a winter wonderland

It wasn't much, but anything is a thousand times better than nothing which is all I've been doing lately, nothing. To make it all better, the ground and the trees were still covered in snow, a rare sight here in our part of the world. I must confess to being as excited as a little child about the snow, the beauty of it, and the unusual awareness it put into just being outdoors. Too bad I am not fit enough to stay out a really long time.

But wait, the day got even better. I texted the Mad Swimming Scientist to go ahead and get the bad news about practice being cancelled again. DUDE, WE HAD PRACTICE! So I drove over to see my grandchildren, and my granddaughter was wearing her mother's Chicot Challenge T-shirt. Sweet.

I spent some time with the kids and Smu and measured my daughter for her height. She has been told by her co-workers that she is NOT the 4'11" she claims. Well, I had her stand barefoot against the wall and carefully marked the spot where the top of her head came. Then I took a tape measure and carefully took a reading. She is not only as tall as she claims, but I measured her at 4'11 and 3/8". Take that, co-workers.

At DSU I was in no hurry to get in the water, which is unusual for me. After having been off for two weeks, I knew I had lost fitness and the regular practice would be enough. Mark Blackwood and I stood around and chatted and waited for Cagri to get there before we jumped in. I only swam 700 for a warm up. Normally I like to do at least 1,000, and if I get in early I can usually manage to sneak in 1,500 or more.

Then the practice started with 4 X 200, each 200 having a floating 50, that is a fast 50 that moved its position in each set. After that we did 8 X 100 with a floating 25 in each one. Can you guess what came next? If you guessed 2 X 400 you would be wrong but thinking right. Cagri's practices always have a mathematical balance. The next set was 1 X 800 with fins and paddles, and we were supposed to make it difficult in the manner of our own choosing. Isn't that sweet? Just like a college football team that has been caught breaking NCAA rules, we are sometimes expected to self-discipline or self-punish ourselves. Oh, I think for this one I will bang my head against the pool wall at each turn around. That should make him happy. 

Sometimes he will even go down the deck after a self-punish set and ask each swimmer what he or she did to self-punish. First time he did that it caught me off guard and had me stuttering for a second. Finally I came up with, "Floating 50s with some extra kicking between each." He smiled big at that, but I'm not sure if it was because he knew I was telling one or he thought I had come up with some good self-punishing.

Since I had left my fins in the truck, I chose to self-punish by seeing how long I could keep up with Mark, whom I always beat until we put on fins. In other words, even if I had my fins, Mark would still best me on this one but without the fins it would be a massacre. I hung with him for 150 and then the goal became to try to prevent him from lapping me, which I did manage to do. After practice I swam another 700 adding my own mathematical balance to the practice for a total of 3,800 scys.

I now feel a lot better and a lot more relaxed. I slept well last night and awakened this morning a pound lighter than the day before. That always make me happy. And currently I am hanging our with Jeff and the cats trying to dream up and nice practice of my own where I can self-punish with some mathematical balance. That always makes me happy. Maybe I could do 3 X 1,000 with a kick set between each swim. Nice balance but how to self-punish? Wait, I know. I can scrape the side of my face with my thumbnail on every ninth recovery stroke. 

Dang, I'm good.