december highlights: first triple, teaching Total Immersion, first jumping course in a LONG time...
Thursday, December 20. Sunrise swim, sunset ride.
Started my day at 6:00am with a swim. Yep, I'm going to be swimming in the morning from now on, except for some afternoon slots on weekends. Swimming in the morning is a bit different since your muscles aren't all that interested in jumping into a major physical activity. But since I'm pretty high energy in the morning its not to big of an issue. The swim today actually felt pretty good if you exclude that I was still sore from all my running and riding of late. I swam for about 30 minutes which is when my technique started deteriorating...no need to reinforce bad technique.
The ride was awesome tonight. I jumped Pet Step, the horse I learned to jump on. One of my many riding challenges right now is to regain confidence in my jumping so remind myself that I do really know how to do this. Its been so long since I've jumped I notice that I was a lot more anxious than I used to be. We actually did several courses tonight, including one that started with an oxer. The jumps were only 2'6" - 2'9" so they weren't that scary. But doing courses after such a long jumping dry spell was quite the nerve wraker for me. It all turned out well though. I'M LOVIN IT!
Wednesday, December 19. A whole lot of run.
Did yet another run tonight. Did the long Portage Bay course again and came in 23 seconds faster. Not a big change, but I'll take it at this point, especially since I was still recovering from my sprint runs the night before. I had hoped to join the Greenlake group tonight, but it just didn't happen since we had several visitors come by the house last night to check it out. For that same reason, I didn't get to fencing at all, which was OK because I was pooped.
Tuesday, December 18. Two runs and a ride
Susan and I hooked up to do the Club Northwest run tonight at the very new and fancy UW indoor track. It turned out that the football team was practicing for their bowl game so most of the goup opted out of running at the track. We did a few laps then decided to go elsewhere. Greenlake it was. Susan did the lake and I tried a bit of speed work. I did a small, simple pyramid 1/2 lap slow, 1/2 lap fast, lap slow, lap fast, etc. My times were pretty slow but it did feel pretty good to do some faster running.
The ride went really well tonight. I rode Merlin and had a great ride. Laura had me working on leg position mostly. My posting was feeling pretty rough so we also worked on making it a lot smoother. Since we had lowered my stirrips for the posting drills, the canter felt really strange, but in the end it all came together. Susan was, of course, a rockstar again.
Susan and I (and maybe Sloan) from the east coast pentathlon group are all headed up for Canadian Winter Nationals in Chilliwack, about 3 ours from Seattle, January 25th. Should be fun.
Monday, December 17. Running and Fencing.
Finally got off my butt and started running again last night. I can't even remember why I haven't been doing it consistently anymore other than I've been busying myself with moving around stuff in my house. The run didn't feel so good at the start but it must have picked up somewhere because I came in 49 seconds faster than my last run. I was pretty please with that.
Fencing went pretty good as well. I fenced Angela, Martin and Travis and did pretty well against all of them. Travis is always the big challenge. He's trying for the 2004 Olympics in epee so he really puts it to me and gets a kick out of fencing pentathletes.
Tuesday, December 11. Swimming downhill.
Since I was pretty fresh from teaching the TI workshop, one of the things I knew I wanted to focus on was swimming downhill and breathing correctly so that I don't bring my head out of the water. I did a lot of swim drills and it all felt pretty good. My left deltoid area is still pretty sore from my crash and burn off the horse last week so I only swim for 20 minutes or so.
Sunday, December 9. Teaching Total Immersion.
I signed up to be a coaching intern for the Total Immersion workshop that was in town this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. I took the workshop last July and wanted to be able to help out my fellow pentathletes a little more so decided to sign up for the internship program. I REALLY enjoyed it. I of course learned (re-learned) a lot but really had a blast teaching others the TI style. Also had a few folks ask if I could do some private lessons too at the end. Now I'll be coaching in the ride and the swim I guess. Can't wait to get back in the pool myself and re-apply the TI stuff I forgot about.
Tuesday, December 4. Catch me I'm falling.
I took quite a fall in my riding lesson tonight. I wasn't even two laps into my walk warm up on Dundee (a horse that's known for being "hot" on occasion). I should go back in my story and say that I should have known better given that they suggested that we let Dundee out in the arena before I got on to "get it out". As with most horses during this "get it out" process, he raced around the arena snorting, farting and bucking for a while. He even fell twice because he took corners too fast...interesting. Anyway, two walking laps of the arena I began adjusting my reins because they were a bit twisted. Dundee jumped to the canter, then the gallop, and showed no signs of stopping. After about four laps at full speed and me doing everything I cold to get him under control, I pretty much intentionally fell off. I fell on my shoulder and side of my head so I was covered with arena dirt. After a few minutes I could tell that dundee musted have stepped on my left foot too since it started to swell. Because of the foot situation and I decided not to get back on. Ahh, the joys of riding.
Monday, December 3. Tripple wammy workout.
Yup, I did my first triple in a long time. I started with a shoot down in my basement...did surprisingly well. I didn't keep track of my shots or count up my score, but all my shots were in the black and there were lots of tens and nines.
After the shoot I made a quick change in to running gear and started a new route around Portage Bay that will give me 6 minutes of warm up, some stretching and then a a little over a 3 mile run. My time was 23:49 so I'll run it a couple more times to get my baseline and then start my intervals. This run didn't feel all that great, but I finished it and by the end it was feeling a little better.
Finally if was off to fencing...the first time in over two months. By luck of the draw I ended up fencing Ludovic and Travis. Ludovic is the fellow from France that recently won our local pentathlon held in September...he's good. Travis is with the Boeing Fencing Club and is trying to make the 2004 Olympic team...also very good. I call it the baptism by bruise since they ended up getting most of the touches on me (although I did get a few nice ones in). My distance was way off, my arm and hand motions too big and my fingers didnt' seem to have any point control. Give me a couple weeks and I'll be back on track.
Looking forward to my first pentathlon of 2002, Canadian winter nationals up in BC.
Sunday, December 2. Weekend swims.
Had good swims on Saturday and Sunday. I'm starting to feel more power in my stroke/kick combination finally and even seem to be getting back into shape (I'm not gasping for air all the time). The big Total Immersion workshop that I'm interning for is coming up this weekend, so I'm pretty excited about that. If all goes well, I'll be starting up my shooting and running again on Monday. I seemed to have come a cross a new pocket of energy and motivation that has me riding pretty hihg at the moment. I've been playing Ricky Markets "Cup of Life" every morning that starts out "Do you really want it?" so that's my latest montra.
