On the shelf for a while

After a quick Friday swim (in the crosswise, short end of the pool, right next to the movable barrier (which I scraped my hand on - sheesh), I think I'm out of commission for a while because the alma mater is on winter break. If I can't swim for a month, I guess I'll have an ice cream cutback, but otherwise it is probably not the worst thing, shoulder-wise...

Happy Wednesday, medium Thursday

After a largely twinge-free 3,250-yard swim Wednesday, my shoulder's been whining off and on today, so I figured I'd let today slide and swim Friday.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much, but this is kind of annoying. Maybe six-days-a-week swimming at the outset wasn't the most prudent plan.

thbbbppppp

What a relief! Well, mostly

Monday is a short day at work, so I don't have to go back after swimming.

After a few days off - and with massage-lady intervention on Saturday - I figured two miles would not be any big deal. I thought wrong, of course, but I was able to get in about 2,700 yards with very little discomfort.

But the swim wasn't trouble-free. After 23 laps, I noticed a little twinge in my shoulder, and it pestered me on and off the rest of the swim. I finally called it good with about 10 laps to go.

Oh well. I haven't felt any after-effects, so I guess this is just a steady-as-she-goes kind of deal. Whatever that means.

Champing at the bit

am I... Swimming has been hit and miss, but I have new bruises to show the massage lady's had her say with my shoulder, so today I will get a swim in, come hell or 6-foot-deep water.

An easy Wednesday

These posts are all looking quite similar to one another. Wednesday, I just dropped through for a half-hour swim, nothing special. Mostly, I am looking forward to seeing the massage lady on Saturday - what a relief!

Saturday swim

Two miles, no problems.

On the other hand, my shoulder bugs me when I'm out of the water, frequently.

Maybe I need to set up a desk in the pool!

Lost day

Too little sleep and too much hunger put the kibosh on today's swim after just a few laps... oh well.

School's in!

At last, the alma mater reopened the pool, so I stopped by on a day off of work and took a dip.

Two miles, no pain (just one twinge, which is very nice, especially because my shoulder and arm have been troublesome out of the water lately), and fairly quick (for me).

70 laps in about 80 minutes, anyway, and that includes the break between the warmup (750 yards) and the rest.

Turkey Day break

so, no swimming for the week. In truth, this seems like a good thing - my shoulder is a little tweak-ish still. Maybe a week off will do some good?

Wednesday yes, Thursday no

So, sickness and health:

On Tuesday, I survived a short swim and on Wednesday I was able to do 2,750 yards, a little slow but really just fine. But my shoulder bugged me, so I didnt' go Thursday and with Thanksgiving on short final at the alma mater, I'm not sure if I'm going to be swimming this week or taking an injury time out.

Whatever. At least I got a good swim in Wednesday!

still ill

Well, I think it is probably a sign when I go from just short of two miles to being worn out at about 1,000 yards, but at least I made it to the pool.

I had to go in the evening, which meant swimming in the "small pool," which is a portion cordoned off from the rest of the pool by a moveable barrier. The smaller portion has three lanes and is kinda short, but I wasn't really setting records Tuesday night, so no big deal.

ugh, sick.

and tired, which as Bill Cosby says, always goes with sick.

So Friday was short & I took the weekend off.
blech.

Wednesday swim

took it easy today, and noticed that the pool won't be open at lunchtime tomorrow "in support" of the alma mater's all-day symposium on how to stop being a bunch of racist bozos. Seriously, the school's taking a day off to address a whole range of stuff: multiculturalism, classism, racism, blah blah blah.

The day was precipitated by a foolish choice by a couple of fraternity members, who wore blackface to a party and compounded the idiocy by letting photos make their way onto the Web.

So, those two motherfuckers are why I can't swim at lunch... Oh well.

light week, but not entirely by choice

After only getting in three swims during the week, I showed up at the pool Saturday and found a meet in progress. On the bright side, the alma mater won (maybe the opposing team shouldn't have gone to Applebee's the night before, where the butterfly lady and I saw them)...

Of course, I can always use a few enforced time outs, and I can always go tonight!

Sunday swim

I'm not sure how much credit goes to the massage lady's use of cupping, scraping, tiger balm or her other skills, but I'm pretty sure I owe her big.

Today I did a fairly quick 3,250...

Chlorine, chlorine

Round my thoughts, running round my nose, chlorine, oh you old chlorine.

Hopped in the pool, lord and got a whiff of you,
all I want now is some good loratidine.
Chlorine, oh you old chlorine.

Chlorine's for water, lord, it ain't for me,
Maybe it kills ya, but tweedle-dee...

OK, I tried. Townes Van Zandt would be so proud.

Just another ordinary day today: 750 warmup and a happy little 2,500 after...

On the road to healthy

After another 3,250 on Sunday, I felt twinges in both shoulders off and on, but nothing out of the ordinary, and mostly the sort of unpleasant feeling you get from a hard workout combined with lurking partial injuries.

In other words, I feel about the same as I did in the spring, when the shoulder troubles commenced. Which as Martha would say is a very good thing.

Yardage increase!

I haven't boosted my yardage for a while, and I've been feeling healthier (maybe even full of vim and vigor, for all you V-word-seeking Scrabble types) so I went up to 3,250 on Thursday. I think I could have gone to 3,500, one of my interim goals, but why throw the dice unnecessarily?

As far as a long-term goal, I'm not so sure. I can easily do two miles (70 laps) in the time available (90 minutes). Thursday, I swam 65 laps in 65-70 minutes, so maybe I'll shoot for 80, which is 4,000 yards, each day. That would be more than 11 miles a week, which if my handy-dandy multiplier works is about the equivalent of a 45-mile week running. Not too shabby.

Of course, there's always the velocity problem, but I think maybe I need to have more than 13 months of swimming under my belt before I start to worry too much about how fast/slow I'm going.

Headed toward a yardage increase

I don't know when the last time I went up was, but it has been a while. I've been pretty consistent around 3,000 yards since switching pools (a month and a half ago!), so after today's run-of-the-mill swim, which I noticed was done with about 15 minutes to go in pool time, I think the time is fast approaching to tack on 250 or so. I'd like to add 500, to make it an even two miles, but that might need to wait a little while.

Birdman kicked Wesley Willis's ass, but the Massage Lady saved mine.

How high's the water, mama?

Depends on which end of the pool you're in, I guess. The new pool doesn't vary in depth, as far as I can tell. But Friday and Sunday, the new pool was still closed for repairs (I overheard another someone say that the tiles on the deck hadn't cured properly and some had failed, so maybe that's the deal).

Both days were just fine, 3,000 yards without any big problems. On Saturday, the massage lady did her magic, including a round of cupping (an old technique that involves inverted cups, vacuum and bruises that make my back look like she threw salami slices at me).

Say what you will about non-Western medicine (and if you're severly skeptical, in many cases I'll join you), but the massage lady gets results.

Thank goodness, because I want to keep eating ice cream, and that won't happen so much if I can't swim!

Better on the second day

I felt right at home today, and swam 3,000 yards with no big trouble. I also overheard some talk of why the new pool is closed: Apparently, some of the tiles on the deck are failing because they weren't properly cured.

Could this be related to the hurry-up opening??? The world wonders.

Different pool, same activity

Having planned carefully and arrived on time, I missed the little yellow signs at the alma mater's new pool: Construction of some sort continues, so the daily swim is at the school's old pool until Saturday or so.

Of course, I had changed and showered, but no big deal. I still had time for a pretty pleasant 3,000 yards, although the old pool is definitely more chemical-ly than the new one. It is also a bit warmer.

On the sunny side, my shoulder only complained once, and only a little. I'm not sure that's a "hooray!" moment, but it was encouraging.

Ah, the forgotten vagaries of the school pool

Well, even the new pool has one of the old one's faults: being closed during breaks. Since I commenced, the alma mater decided to adopt a four-day break that includes Columbus Day, so that's happening now. Oh well, I'm sure my shoulder can use the break.

That's interesting, though. I wonder if the adoption of Invader's Day as a school holiday is part of the push to become a "national" liberal arts college. A rubbbishy goal in the first place, especially because it cuts into my swimming time (and the students' class time. grr.)

short Friday swim

which would have been longer, except for deadline excitement at the paper and a very small squirrel I encountered on the way from work to pool. The little one was knocked out on the sidewalk and had a bloody nose, presumably from falling out of a tree.

While I worked the phones (it was way too cute to leave to the marauding cats and birds) the squirrel came to, so I scooped it up in a discarded drink cup and returned it to a safe-looking notch in what I guessed was its tree. When the butterfly lady and I stopped by much later, there was no sign of the squirrel, so maybe it got a new lease on life.

My abbreviated swim was still more than a mile and pretty quick. Not too shabby :)

Wednesday afternoon swim

Well, the best part was that the place across the street still had samosas, chana masala and fry bread (OK, nan, I suppose, but it was fried) when I got out of the pool.

A forgettable, mile-plus swim. At least it was an hour in the water...

inconsistent, but oh well

Today's swim was going fine until I started feeling a little twinge-y. Not too much, but nothing I wanted to push. So I stopped at about 2,600 yards - still not slacking. And a quick check on a scale at work suggests I've made up for the time off in Virginia.

That commonwealth, in my opinion, has one of the top 5 flags in the union, and probably the best motto: Sic Semper Tyrannis, which incidentally is what some say John Wilkes Booth shouted after shooting Abraham Lincoln.

Another easy-schmeezy swim

I know I'm not a particularly fast swimmer, so it is a pleasant surprise when I notice I'm lapping people who are doing the same thing as me (continuous crawl, as opposed to kickboard or some other relaxing pastime). I'm not in competition, but it eats at me to swim hard and find myself only keeping up with people who are lazing along.

I suppose that is just incentive.

Anyway, Thursday's swim was about 3,000 yards. I think the water temperature has risen a little, but maybe I'm just getting used to it. The first 25 yards is always a shock, but I warm up quickly, thank god.

Business as usual

Another day, another 3,000 yards. Maybe more, but of course I can't count properly while swimming. I have heard of goggles with an indicator of some kind, maybe a heads-up display to tell how many laps you've gone.

That seems unnecessary, but on the other hand, I routinely lose count. Oh well.

They don't call it crawl for nothing

After a week-plus off for travel - in which I got in a grand total of one swim - I returned to the pool yesterday afternoon for a medium-OK swim. I think it was about 2,500 yards and my shoulder and arm felt fine. I have all these grand performance plans, but I think maybe just being in the pool for a reasonably hard, hour-plus swim five days a week is a pretty good goal in itself.

At least, that's what I told myself as I crept along...

The long and short of it

Wednesday and today, I rushed to the pool for a post-deadline swim.

On Wednesday, the lifeguards had to flag me down at the end of the swim time because I was still rushing along, trying to make distance (3,000 yards, but I fell short by about 250).

Today, I didn't have that problem. After about 2,000 yards, I was out of gas and left early to have some lunch.

Today was also the first day I noticed the music the lifeguards have been blaring. I always notice, of course, but today I could hear the music while I was swimming. Unfortunately, it wasn't very good music!

Benchmark

On Sunday: Two miles in 75 minutes.

Of course, that's approximate, because I may have gone farther than 3,550 yards (but that was my count) and I may have been under 75 minutes (but no glasses + timers makes the precise time a mystery).

So, where to find 15 minutes to shave off?

On the sunny side, my shoulder felt fine for almost the whole workout, with only a couple of minor twinges. In the never-ending quest for the secret to warding off injury, my latest guess is that the damage is done when my form decays (aka when I get tired and forget to stay parallel with the pool bottom and keep my stroke in line), so I have been cracking down on that...

Also, I haven't had to rely much on decongestants, although I did take one last night. That's only two times since I switched pools!

Cool as a cucumber

Another merry 3,000-plus yards in the cool waters of the Paul Harvey Pool (yegods, is that name coincidence?).

I did notice a small bit of trouble brewing: My suit is wearing a little thin in places. A threadbare jacket is one thing, a threadbare Speedo another entirely. :)

3,000-plus

All of the open swim times at the alma mater's pool are at least 90 minutes, which means I can tackle the two miles in an hour goal in a better way than before, by swimming two miles a day and trying to increase my speed to get down to an hour. Maybe I'll have to be more official and try a mix of speed and distance workouts, but I'm still pretty casual about all this. As long as I can get to 10 miles a week - without injury, god damn it - I think I'll be happy.

I suspect that to keep eating what I like and maintain the weight I want, I'll have to slowly raise the mileage or the speed to burn more calories. But those worries are a ways off...

Step one in the new goal-reaching scheme is to swim two miles at a time, so I stepped up to a little over 3,000 yards Sunday. Sixty laps in 60 minutes is not too tough, but I'm not quite there. I raised the warmup to 750 yards, then at least 2,250, then a short cooldown. I think that with the break and the likely extra laps, I probably was around 50 yards a minute, but who knows? And I suppose, who cares? It was a very good swim, in pleasantly chilly water.

Thursday swim

Very similar to Wednesday, although I got in a little later and ran out of time, but I still did about 2,750 or 2,800 yards. I'm relieved to find that I have been able to get back to where I was last fall and beyond without incurring any great physical cost.

That sentence was ridiculous. I meant to say:

Thank god I can go farther than I did 10 months ago without getting hurt.

My shoulder feels a little sketchy at times, but the swims haven't made it worse, and the nearly two weeks off didn't make it better, either. Que curioso.

awww yeah

The alma mater's new pool opened today, so in I went. Nice locker room, pretty pool (with lots of natural light from large windows up high - I could see the partly cloudy skies every so often), cold water (hurray!), what a deal.

The pool is 30 meters long and has a moveable bulkhead that cordons off a 25-yard portion and leaves a smaller pool for people who like that sort of thing to swim crosswise in. I grabbed a lane and dusted off the nearly two-week layoff with no problem. I figured what the hell and did 2,900 yards. Easy breezy, and I'm not too congested yet, either.

The lunch hour swim (which I was in for) is an hour and a half, so I guess the time restriction makes my old 2 mph goal a little unnecessary. I figure 3,600 yards is what I'll shoot for, and maybe that will wind up being doable in 6o minutes...

Anyway, a farewell to decongestants would be a huge plus, as would dumping the $36.50 or whatever the Y requires each month. Money's not that plentiful, for christ's sake.

perched at the edge

of insanity, recuperation and the pool, too. The alma mater claims it opens its old pool Tuesday, the same day as a planned open house at the new pool. Well, we'll see.

My shoulder feels better and I'm antsy to get back in the water. A week-plus is too long, damn it.

antsy for a swim

Here I sit, still on the shelf while the pool people get organized and my shoulder heals.

The time off has made a big dent in my ice cream consumption but has probably been a good thing for my injury, for which I am sure I was overdue.

Looking back on my past athletic escapades, I see a long pattern of wear-and-tear problems, and I haven't taken this much time off since I started swimming last September.

Gee, 1 plus 1 equals 2.

Well, here's to hoping that my return to aqualand (currently set for Tuesday at the alma mater's old pool) goes swimmingly.

On the shelf

But not entirely by choice: Not only is the usual pool closed for maintenance, the backup (alma mater) pool is closed until Aug. 29, and the school's new pool isn't open yet. Curses!

On the flip side (har-de-har), that does mean a week of enforced rest, which I am sure my shoulder could use.

so much for that

Well, Thursday was back to 2,400 meters, mostly because my shoulder told me to call it a day at that point.

As usual, I had trouble keeping count, so I think I went farther than my official tally. When I lose count, or think I do - this happens four or five times a workout, at least - I just go back to the last count I remember. I think this means I typically add a couple laps to each workout, but I really don't have a good handle on the situation. I know I'm swimming at least what I report, and probably farther most days.

I need some way to count laps that will work. I seem to recall reading about goggles that have a heads-up display that keeps track, but that seems silly (and probably expensive). I guess I'll get one of those around the same time I decide to have music piped in through my bones via an mp3 player attached to my head. Which is to say, never.

Although my workday is music-free on account of being in a newsroom (and they all seem to be music-free), I just can't get that excited about listening to anything while I work out. Like my friend and colleague once said of people who jog while wearing a Walkman, "Are they that fucking afraid to be alone with themselves?"

Back to 2,600

The massage lady said to take it easy (so did the butterfly lady, for that matter), and I have been.

But without pushing, and with time to spare at the end, I was able to return to 2,600 meters Wednesday. I think with a little push, I could get to 2,800 pretty easily, but that's out until ML has me back in one piece.

How my schemes will be affected by the impending, inevitable move to a different pool, at least in the short run, remains to be seen. Because more time is allowed at the alma mater's old pool, and may be at its new pool, too, I'll have to decide whether to stick with an hour and try to pick up the speed just by hustle or maybe stretch out the distance to build up strength.

I probably need a coach.

change in the offing

Monday's swim was nothing out of the ordinary, although there were many, many other swimmers on hand. So I just took my usual spot between Gary and Varsity (and her circle-swimming pal) and watched most everybody whiz on by.

As expected, the pool authorities left a note announcing the annual maintenance will be from Aug. 19-Sept. 5. Drat.

But that is a good reason to check with the alma mater and see how they plan to deal with alumni who want to use their fancy new pool, which almost certainly would be cooler and less chemical-ly. I would like very much to ditch the decongestants, and being as I didn't need them in the college's old pool, I'm optimistic the new one would be OK, too.

So, we'll see.

Massage Lady 1, Shoulder 0

Taking the advice of the massage lady, who worked on me this afternoon, I took it (comparatively) easy in the pool today. She was right: The massage loosened up my shoulders enough to tempt me to try to fly, but I'm no fool (OK, at least not in this way), so I just put in a smooth 1.5-miler.

I'm officially revising my yardage goal, based in part on how I felt before and after her work and before and after the swim. I'm thinking now that if I can get to two miles in an hour by the second anniversary of the swimming project (that date is Sept. 6), I'll be satisfied. Seeing as how I'm not really all that far off right now, maybe that's a reachable target.

Besides, I always like to hit the mark early :)

defective self, defective swim

Monday's swim was nothing to write home about (nor, I suppose to write here until today), so I took Tuesday off and will do the same today. Speed wasn't a problem, but I felt out of synch and wore out early.

I pin my hopes on massage lady to help get things sorted out...

Clarinex & Clarinex-D

Maybe it is too early to tell for sure, because I've only taken these prescription versions of Claritin a couple of times.

Clarinex - OK, but nothing fabulous. I stay congested, but not too much.

Clarinex-D - Not great. Too aggressive at first, then too little oomph later on. Plus, I tend to wake up from it strung out, dehydrated. Ugh.

For the long haul, Clarinex (or maybe its OTC counterpart) is looking like a good possibility. Whatever else is true, I drink water like mad.

Saturday morning swim

An advantage of the local pool on Saturday is longer hours, a two-hour block. Previously, I would use the time to take a long swim, but I stuck with a mile-and-a-half today, which was no big deal.

When I arrived, the pool was empty, and only a few other swimmers stopped in, perhaps because of the ongoing Peach Basket Classic, a three-on-three street basketball tournament that is played annually here. The pool operator's have a big hand in the tourney, so maybe that helps explain the largely vacant facility.

Whatever. I don't mind swimming alone, and even when there're plenty of others in the pool, I'm not really swimming with them.

Just another easygoing Saturday in the summer...

Day 2 of the revision

and I'm wondering why I didn't figure it out earlier. I still took it easier than before, but I had time to spare yet again, so it looks as though adding yardage after the massage lady has intervened is probably a go.

thank goodness.

minor breakthrough

or maybe more:

So I've been rasslin' with this shoulder problem for quite some time, and have had to take days off I wouldn't have otherwise, ease up on weaving on days I wouldn't have otherwise, you get the picture.

In trying to come up with my own solutions, I fiddled with my stroke, in particular what I do when I breathe. For some reason known only to Poseidon, I took up kind of looking over my shoulder when I breathed in. This did indeed work, at least as far as making the twinge in my left arm go away.

Jolly good, says I. But today, while I was breezing through a routine but semi-out-of-synch warmup (maybe I'm feeling that summertime out-of-whack thing, too), I thinks to meself "Arrr. There's no way that over-the-shoulder thing is a good idea. If I'm supposed to be parallel to the bottom of the pool (a place I should probably refer to as Davy Jones's Locker :), I shouldn't have my head coming up out of the water to look back."

OK, so that's not verbatim.

But I took a crack at simply looking up at the ceiling and presto! less water in my mouth, easier breathing, better hydrodynamic profile and - duh - higher speed with lower effort. That can't be good for burning calories, of course, but it sure makes the swim more fun.

Now I harbor this hope that when the massage lady can fit me in and I can get back to having a loose back/shoulder/arm system, I can use this improvement in the stroke to pick up the pace a little.

I do, after all, have promises to keep, and miles to go.

odds & ends

Well, the non-decongestant Clarinex seems to help, but not as much as the decongestant sorts. The kind doctor says decongestants, being uppers and all, raise blood pressure, so maybe this comes down to being fully decongested but with higher BP or being just OK on both accounts...

As far as yardage and whatnot goes, last week worked out pretty well: four days, good distance, good speed. The intervention of specialists will be necessary soon as far as the shoulder goes, though.

Day 2 of Clarinex sans decongestant...

... and the breathing's fine, though maybe not quite so purrfect as with the D. Hey, if this is as good as it gets, and the drug doesn't lose its powers, I'm satisfied.

Also, today's swim was about a mile and a half, maybe a tad less, and went pretty smoothly shoulder-wise. I have high hopes that the doctor's orders will help in this regard.

not far, but far better

After visiting with the doctor earlier in the day, I thought it might be prudent to try to ease up a little, which was made way easier by the slowpoke lifeguard-opening-door problem and the unforeseen interruption of my swim by someone hoping to share a lane. Varsity and I agreed to share a lane, which would have given us a chance to show off our ability to flip turn and crash into each other, but Curtis (so it isn't Gary OR Bob, geez) was almost done so the question was moot. The interloper simply took his lane.

I also learned Monkey's real name, because he broke the ice, so to speak, and asked mine. It is kind of nice to know everybody's name after all these months. Varsity, however, wasn't spilling the beans. She did remind me of a great joke, however:

I had a paper route when I was a kid. I was supposed to go to 2,000 houses. Or two Dumpsters.

and you can put a dash after that joke, and then write Mitch Hedberg.

Sinus madness

Well, the kind doctor sent me off today with a bag full o' goodies and prescription slips of all sorts. She says I could take Claritin-D until the cows come home, but suggested as an experiment that I try out the following:

• Flonase (fluticasone propionate) - an intranasal corticosteroid (damn, there goes my eligibility). The manufacturer notes that "as with many medications, exactly how FLONASE works isn’t entirely understood."
• Clarinex (desloratadine, which explains why Rite-Aid's generic OTC is called Lorata) - a prescription antihistamine brought to you by the makers of Claritin.
• Clarinex-D (pseudoephedrine sulfate and desloratadine) - a prescription antihistamine and decongestant brought to you by, well, I think you probably know where it comes from.

Besides sack-o-pharm, she also prescribed massage therapy (hooray!) for the left-arm-and-shoulder ailments detailed here and elsewhere.

On the swimming front, I eased off a little Tuesday and swam an easy 2,400 with time to spare at the end. As a salve for my left arm, I simply went a little slower and shortened my stroke. No big deal, though I felt resistance anytime I foolishly sped up, lengthened my stroke or overlooked some other minor detail.

Water wastrels

I'm sure there are plenty of water misers in town, but after a seriously squishy step on the grassy strip along the sidewalk outside my place of employment, I am reminded of the surplus of water hogs in the city.

To wit: 'Round lunchtime Monday, the butterfly lady and I passed the Mill Creek Brew Pub and saw that the sprinklers had been running so long that water was slopping off the saturated lawn and into the storm drain a few feet away. This in a town in the southeast Washington prairie (a beautifully windblown, vowel-laden word for proto-desert).

Water belongs in a pool, not on asphalt.

shoulder improves

After a day of carpentry, I wouldn't have thought my shoulder would feel much better, but I've got the range of motion mostly back (it didn't leave, but my shoulder did that tummy-twisting resistance thing when I experimented yesterday and it did feel sore).

Perhaps it would be prudent to take it a little easier in the water for the next spell...

off to a roaring start

My ingenious plan was to make this all about water, but I guess it is also going to be about physical woes... Thursday may not have done any permanent harm, but it sure did some temporary damage to my somewhat suspect left shoulder. But I think a three-day weekend will help, and if not, there's always other options.

As I noted recently, all of this is way better than running.

tired of sending swimming notes to sleep with the fishies

So I've branched out, a little bit.

Thursday was normal from a yardage standpoint (2,600 meters), but I pushed a bit too hard on the warmup and the first part of the 2,000, so the end, when I would usually sprint, was about the same speed as my cooldown (aka slow).

That said, I'm optimistic I'll be able to go up to 2,800 next week. Had I eased off a bit in the first part of the 2,000, I think I could easily have added 200 meters to the end. But as it was, there was no way I was going a yard farther.