Last Monday and Wednesday I went running, for 3.1 miles each; Tuesday I went swimming. Yesterday I went running, for 4 miles–I was pushing my pace a little so I had to walk part ways.
I’ve been reading the manual for my Garmin Forerunner 305. This watch is ridiculous! It has a compass and a map feature. It can tell you how long it will be before you get to a “map point” such as a water stop.
I downloaded a free GPS map of North Carolina from CloudMade, a community-driven GIS mapping project. This allows me to use Garmin’s “Training Center” and see actual street names when reviewing my GPS data.
I would really like to be able to sketch out bike routes as “courses,” and then upload them to my watch, and then my watch direct me (e.g. “turn left in 0.5 miles”). However, I don’t think this is possible–I can download courses that other people have ridden, but I can’t program in my own course: I have to ride the course once and then I can re-use the course.
I went swimming at the Gateway YWCA today, for about 30 minutes. I got there at around 10 AM, and it looked like a swim meet had just ended. I’m glad I missed it–I wish I knew how to tell when the pool’s going to be in use, so I can consciously avoid meets.
It’s been a while since I went swimming–I could tell my heart rate went way up although I wasn’t doing much exercise. It’s going to take a while to build up again to consistent swimming without breaks.
The YWCA is going to be closed on Christmas Eve at 6 PM, closed Christmas day, and closed on New Year’s Eve at 6 PM. I think their New Year’s Day hours are like 11 AM-6 PM.
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll go running. I’d love to go biking sometime but it’s going to be chilly this week!
I haven’t been exercising for a little while. Like, for a couple of months. I was going to run a half-marathon in early December, but after I ran my first 10 miler I got sick for a couple of days and pretty much just quit running.
Today I was walking around work all day in my running outfit (today was “PG PJ day” at work, which I fear will be a once-in-a-lifetime event) and driving home early from work, with it being in the mid-60s, I realized today would be a great day to start running again.
So, I ran 3.1 miles in around 30 minutes. At least I can still go 3.1 miles without walking! 
It’s supposed to rain this weekend, so I hope to go swimming at the YWCA and maybe use the treadmill.
Total Immersion swimming is amazing. I did lesson #2 today for the first time–I was totally underwater (like my head and body were totally submerged) as I did some of the drills.
I have been swimming for about two months now but I had not been improving much–I got to where I could swim three laps (in a 25m pool, aka 150m total), but I was way out of breath by the end. I’d read a beginning triathlete article recommending that you just swim without focusing on technique for the first six weeks because frankly you just have to figure out a few things by yourself.
I’m really glad I took that advice, because now I am at least not a stranger to the pool (e.g. I know how to share a lane with someone else), but all I was doing was struggling more to swim the same distance faster. I wasn’t improving my distance and I would have to rest at the end of the pool all the time.
So far I feel like the Total Immersion technique, which is all about practicing technique without struggling, will let me swim arbitrary distances without getting too tired.
I am interested in going to a sprint triathalon in September so I am really excited now that swimming won’t necessarily be my most embarassing event!