Snot invasion and a recap

So last Monday I was the only person to show up for the swim class. We worked on a few things and then she taught me flip turns. I'd played around with them before, but with her help, I was able to do them effectively. I can totally see how once you get the hang of them they'd really help conserve energy and increase speed. I'm not there yet. Anyway, I screwed up a few of them by not having enough air in reserve to effectively blow out my nose in the flip - and my sinuses flooded with chlorine. I survived, but about 24 hours later, I suddenly got super congested. I've been suffering since then. I'm sure it didnt' help that I then swam on Wednesday and again on Thursday, but whatever. After work today I'm going to buy a Neti pot and start doing some sinus cleansing! The congestion, pain, coughing, ear aches and snot are out of control. How frustrating!!

Thursday was the first class at Canby with the tri coach/instructor. We did some bobbing and floating drills and as I thought, my water positioning is good. Floating is no problem and neither is breathing when I'm not exerting myself. I'm comfortable in the water (this is not news to me, but it's nice to confirm it). I'm looking forward to what else we'll be learning. What I found interesting was that quite a large number of the swimmers were not even as conditioned as I was! I'm shocked, actually! During our warm up, most of them had to keep resting - where as I was able to just keep swimming. And we did three timed 50's where we also counted our strokes. I got the same time and stroke count for the first two and my third one had the same stroke count but was one second faster. Everyone else said they got slower with each attempt! Maybe I'm not as sucky as I thought and I am just comparing myself to good swimmers too much? I don't know. I want to be a good swimmer though. I want to be able to contact the organizers of the race to get my lane switched from 12 min to 10 min and then I want to do better than 10 minutes, damn it! It's a pride thing. In terms of the overall tri, it's not really going to get me an advantage or anything.

I did create a 12 week tri-training plan for myself. My first brick is this weekend (tomorrow) where I will do a 16 mile ride (with one good sized climb) and follow it with my run (20/10 run/walk now).

Oh, and I've lost another pound without really trying. Maybe having a real training plan is the best way to keep myself on my toes. If so, I'll need to make sure that I sign up for more races soon!