Snap Crackle Pop!

Mark didn't show up to swim this morning. He went to the North Shore b/c there was all the hype that The Eddie was gonna go today... That's super cool to watch for sure (I watched it last time it went I think in 2009?) but the North Shore is not set up to handle a billion people watching surf competitions. At the last minute I guess waves weren't quite big/good enough so they cancelled it. Too bad they couldn't cancel the traffic.

Anyway, it was another solo swim. I got in for a 1000 w/u and thought I was swimming pretty well but my watch said otherwise. It's one thing to swim slow when you know you're swimming slow because it feels slow, but another thing when you think you're moving along pretty well, except you're not. Yikes! Ok so there's some deep fatigue in these arms of mine! My plan was to knock out a 400TT today (part of the swim game is scoring bonus points by knocking out TTs)... my slow warm up made me think twice... like no way I'll be able to pull off anything decent so I almost didn't try. But then I did a set of 50's as 25fast/25 easy, then a 50 fast and hit 38" which for me in this pool is pretty good, so I went for the 400.

Sometimes I check splits in the middle of TT efforts (it's quick/easy for me to glance at my watch as I flip) but today I didn't. Mostly b/c I felt like I was moving well and if I looked at the 200 and saw a number I didn't like I might have quit on myself. So I figured just keep doing the best I could the whole time and whatever it was would be fine. Hit the wall at 5:53 and felt satisfied enough with that.  After 56+k in the last 10 days, I don't have much pop but I also don't really fade. I was reminded today of (Joe Friel's?) graph that shows form, fitness, and fatigue... At the moment I'd say my fitness and fatigue lines would both be pretty high up there. Form? Notsomuch.

Finished up the session with 1000 kick/swim, then a main set 32x100's off various send-offs. I did that set about as lazy as I could (like just swam fast enough to make the send-off). Breaking them up like this makes 32 go by super fast. Total 6200m.

2@1:50
4@1:45
6@1:40
8@1:35
6@1:40
4@1:45
2@1:50

An hour later I was on the table at Dr Zen's office. Zen has fixed pretty much everything that has ailed me for the last few years... I should have gone in to see him earlier! He just looked at my back and said he could see the rotation where one side was rotated like 1/2 inch or something. So that really explains the hip pain. If you're running (and riding?) with one hip way off like that it makes sense that muscles would pull in weird ways... and stay tight/contracted in an effort to protect the joint that is not stable. I'll be honest, when I walked out my SI joint felt awkward... like I'd gotten used to it being in that weird position so having it set 'right' felt odd. I didn't try running today b/c I wanted to give it a bit more time to settle in but hopefully I'll feel stable enough to try tomorrow.