Boring Swim Sets, Big Steel Challenge, and Pee Sticks

Sometimes (ok often), endurance training is not very exciting. I think athletes like to talk all about their fast/hard workouts but the reality is that the bulk of the work we do is fairly monotonous and boring.

I didn't get in the pool for ~5 days. I could tell you all the logistical reasons why but the truth is that I just prioritized other stuff ahead of swimming (my choice, it's almost always a choice, even when it doesn't initially appear to be). It's not normal for me to do that so I don't stress about it, but when I got back in the water yesterday I didn't expect to feel great (consequence of my choices, I can accept that). Rather than getting to do something fun and fast, we just knocked out a moderate volume aerobic set.

1000 easy w/u then main set all off 50"/50 base send-off, no extra rest between rounds:
3x150's; 3x100's; 3x50's
2x150's; 3x100's; 6x50's
1x150; 3x100's; 9x50's

It was steady and fine and I held it together well enough and as I was jogging home I had the thought that I could probably get away with swimming 1-2x/week and not really slow down very much. I won't take that route for a few reasons: 1) I genuinely enjoy swimming, mostly b/c of the people I swim with and 2) I think swim fitness (or lack thereof) shows itself later in the day if you're racing a triathlon so even if I only lost a minute on the swim itself, I'd likely lose more time later in the day simply from being overly fatigued.

Funny that is my view on swim fitness and yet I haven't been on my bike in at least a month now.

My legs were (are) still quite sore from lifting heavy things on Monday. I didn't run much yesterday other than jog commute to the pool then a short dog jog in the afternoon. I did however do another lifting session, maybe against my own better judgement... but I'm a sucker for silly online competitions and since I'm in one right now with the Big Steel Challenge, I did the session and for sure did at least twice as much as I would have had I not been logging it online. Whether that's good or bad is yet to be determined. Walking is uncomfortable today but jogging with Maia this morning was tolerable and I will head out this afternoon on my own and see how far I can reasonably go.

Talking trash on Twitter is fun and probably the real reason I am participating in the Steel Challenge.

In other news, a few of my local athletes and I had the chance to have dinner with Stacy Sims last night. I knew she was smart but damn, she pretty much blew our minds with all the stuff she said... I took pages and pages of notes and am still trying to process it all. Really I think I could have sat there for several more hours and just let her talk. She did say she's in the final stages of writing a book that's supposed to come out in February so I'll have that on pre-order I'm sure. In the meantime, per Stacy's advice, I just ordered a bunch of pee-sticks and am going to start experimenting with those.