taco night!

after an arduous day at work, there is nothing better than dinner waiting for you at home. i was exhausted by the time i got home at 8 last night, and A had made tacos for dinner w/ grilled chicken and steak, salsa, corn, rice, veggies, cheese..mmmmm! the way to my heart is through my stomach.

on to the less important stuff. yesterday's workout was meant to be "moderate" to recover from the ride on sunday, so i swam at the bridgewater pool before jetting off to a 2 hour commute. i joined A's 4:45 a.m. crowd and then worked on 500, 400, 300, 200, 300, 400, 500 negative splits b/c i didn't have much motivation so i figured negative splits would force me to put in some effort. negative splits are fun b/c you can spend the first half focusing on technique and the 2nd on applying that to speed. then sb joined and we did a couple 100 n/s until cm showed up and warmed up. unfortunately i could only do 1 set w/ them but it was enough to give me a refresher in how fun it is to swim w/ team THPH. it's really nice to work out with people who are mutually encouraging and who aren't trying to beat you (and whom you're not trying to beat) at every lap. no egos at the pool, please!

this morning, i had planned on doing a track workout but just didn't feel up to it since the pumpkin ride last sunday, so i'll do it thursday when there is no rush to make it to master's swim. so instead, i ran intervals, 3x5:00 w/ 2:00 break, 2x5:30 w/ 2:00 break. the first few sets were hard but i had a hard time pushing it for the last few sets. i imagined cm zooming ahead of me but couldn't be bothered to even try to catch up to her. since this saturday i am doing my first 5k in over a year, and thursday will be a track workout, i figure two heart attacks per week is enough. note to self: don't eat breakfast until after running.

then onto columbia swim. i love sleeping on the bus/subway! now i can get two naps a day. today i overslept my bus stop, and only woke up when someone i had never seen before tapped my shoulder and told me i had missed my stop. i guess he had seen me get off there many times before..i thought that was so nice of him! (and kind of creepy.)

the lanes are getting full! today we had 6 in a 25yd lane, and we were all taken aback by our workout b/c the interval times looked like they were for much faster lanes (e.g., 100s on 1:30 where my PR for that pool is 1:26). thank goodness we decided to add 5 seconds to each interval or else that would have been an oxygen-less workout. since i had swum in a 25m pool on saturday and monday, i didn't accurate gauge flip-turn time and slammed my hell onto the top of the pool wall.. twice! i am still limping slightly but i just find it amusing.

the people in my lane are generally pretty fast at the longer distances and not as fast on the shorter ones and on the strokes. it is kind of like the opposite of bridgewater for me, b/c at this pool i'm one of the slower ones for the 400s and above but faster on the 100s and strokes. one lady (who was zooming on the 300s and 400s incidentally) actually complimented me on my non-free strokes which i found very surprising considering my backstroke. then suddenly everyone but me left at 7:35, and my times unsurprisingly slowed down by 5 seconds. it's interesting how much faster you can go when you feel like someone is trying to hunt you down!

workout: 1x100 free, 1x100 i.m., 2x25 easy. 200 free, 2x100 i.m., 2x25 easy. 300 free, 3x100 i.m., 2x25 easy. 400 free, 4x100 i.m. 2x25 easy, 300 free, 3x100 i.m. 200 free. i had a lot of fun on the i.m.'s, esp during fly.

so next race is 5k this saturday at A's 10-year reunion. i am definitely not looking forward to this one... in fact i believe i'd rather ride 62 miles than run 5, but i think it would be good to practice. then the bassman half is the week after, and then the philly marathon is the saturday before thanksgiving. i'd really like to run philly so the post-bassman plan is to cut down on biking/swimming to twice per week each and run more, preferably according to some schedule. this whole idea of thinking before deciding to do something is a pretty new thing for me!