Why "three to five"?

current training schedule

january plans
1-7...holiday camp, san antonio
27-28...wwd mid-winter open (fencing)

discoveries
- I like the blue poweraid

sick days
||||| |

links
stadia

lingo
TPB = training personal best
PB = Portage Bay (run)
PR = Personal record
GL = Greenlake (run)

I did my first triple workout today after about a week of being sick. The shoot went really well, I got almost all of the shots in the black target area. I had was doing pretty well with the Daisy pistol, and then pretty well with the Steyr when the sights were set high (the shots were in a cluster about 2" above the target area), but when I reset the sights on the Steyr, my shots were a little random. I think the Steyr is just a lot more responsive to tiny reactions in my hand.

It felt SO good getting back into the water. I knew going in that I was a little but sluggish but I was actually really pleased with the workout. I got my 50s down to to about 34 seconds and finished my usual workout. Looking foward to hooking back up with the Salmon Bay club on Friday.

Fencing was accetable tonight. I'm still in the valley as far as my fencing, still deconstructing a lot of bad habits and learning the new ones. I worked hard at applying what I learned in lessons with Allen last night...better distance and blade control. Point/bout wise, I didn't do all that well, but I was able to apply what I learned and get a little more under control. Once I get my point control back on track I should be a viable competitor against higher rated fencers. Tonight I got 4 touches on Tim (just won a tournament and got his "A" rating ths last weekend) and 5 on Greg (who beat me 5-0 in the tournament), so I'm content.

30 January. Back to boxing, back to basics in fencing.
I finally made back to the box fit class at the Y. Its been a couple months and I really missed it but I just haven't been able to fit it into my schedule until now. After the first five minutes I was already sweating buckets. The footwork kills your calves (all that bouncing) and this time we used 2lb weights in the upper body/punch sections. They call it box fit for a reason!

In fencing lessons tonight I really went back to some basics both in footwork and bladework. Footwork was mainly distance issues where I discovered that I need to pay more attention to the opponents body than the distance of their weapon. In bladework, Allen had me working mainly on getting the beat and disengage. A lot of precision work just with my fingers. He gave me a couple drills to practice at home as well. Allen is pretty good at finding exactly what is not working and then patiently correcting it.

29 January. Shooting Steyr.
I was pretty busy this afternoon running errands and still wasn't feeling well, so only did a shoot practice today. Although I got more high score shots than I have in the past, I also had a lot of random shots again. I think the Steyr is just much more reactive to small issues than my Daisy ever was. I know I need to focus and relax a lot more and I'm sure more time on the Steyr will do me good too.

Tomorrow I resume the box-fit class after a several month break and I'll be going to Raincity Fencing in Bellevue to start up one a week there. Its looking like Raincity will become the pentathlon headquarters...its location is good (east side near horse venues), its convenient to get to (right off 520), has great facilities and equipment and has some great coaching inclucing Garik Bulyarin who has coached pentathletes in the former Soviet Union. Raincity does a lot of plyometric and other drills similar to what Viktor Svatenko had us doing at the pentathlon camp, so I think it will be a good fit for the athletes. Also, it may be possible to have an indoor shooting range at Raincity too. This would be fantastic. Stay tuned...

28 January. First fencing tournament.
Today, I compted in my first fencing tournament. I actually did pretty well, but didn't place as high as I would have liked...

In a fencing tournament, everyone starts in pools in order to get a seed for the direct elimination (DE) round. With 20 competitors, we had pools of five. I ended up in a pretty difficult pool. I won one bout and got quite a few touches in the others. The more touches, the better as it helps place me better in the DEs. I even scored three touches against the big shot "A" level fencer in our pool.

In the DEs I won my first bout only to end up agains the same "A" level fencer I faced in the pool. Once again, I held my own against him. I wasn't surprised by my loss, I was surprised by my touches...we ended up 15-8. I really do have a long way to go, but its good to have my first competition under my belt. I'm planning on competing in Portland next week, so hopefully I come out with my first rating. I think if I had gotten one more victory in my pool and didn't face the same "A" level fencer in my DE, I could have come away with a "C" rating from this tournament.

27 January. First Steyr shots.
I finally got everything to get my Steyr up and running. It took me several tries to get the cylinder for the gun pumped up correctly with the hand pump. But I was soon off to the basement to try it out. Right off the bat I had the same problem with the Steyr here that I had in San Antonio. I was shooting very high. The good thing was they were all clustered or in a line directly over the target area at 12:00. I brought the sights down over several attempts and eventually got them down into the black area. I ended up shooting a 10, four 9s, two 8s and the other obligatory random shots. I like it!

24 January. Sean 1, cold 2.
Still not feeling to well, but at least I made it to my fencing lesson last night. Not much else to report. I did start housesitting on Lk. Washington today though, so I'll have a nice, peaceful place to rest and relax for a while.

23 January. Sean 0, cold 1.
Yep, it finally happened. The winter cold has hit and I am down for the count. Didn't do any training today, just let my body rest. I did pick up my new Steyr though, pretty snazzy. Can't wait until I get the air pump to fill it up and use it.

I did get a lot of work done at home though, taxes, filing, etc. Got a nice long nap in and watched a movie in the evening.

More importantly, another person found our Northwest Pentathlon website and is interested in starting pentathlon. Yee haw! Just wait until we start doing some recruiting!

22 January. The weekend report...lots of swimming and fencing.
I started my weekend of much swimming on Friday night with the Salmon Bay club. Although you don't get a lot of one-on-one time with the coach in the club practices, you do get some good pointers and a great workout. Once again I did well in the lane I was in, lane 2, so it looks like I may be bumping up to the next lane next time.

Saturday was an break day, no training. Went to an "inaugural bawl" breakfast that morning, to lunch with my landlord to continue the 4 year conversation about buying the house one of these days, did the housecleaning work and ended the day with dinner and the opera (my land lord has season tickets and didn't want to go to this one - Billy Budd). Upon returning from lunch, I noticed a note on the front door from the post office that my Steyr arrived. Unfortunately, the package wasn't back at the post office when I got there so I'll have to wait until Monday to pick it up.

Sunday morning it was back to the pool again for the weekly hour and a half swim. We did a half hour warm up, swam for a half hour straigt and then did a few drill followed by a quick lesson on turns. I've decided to start doing flip turns as much as often as possible now. I've gotten the open turns down pretty well, but I'll need the flip turns in the competition. Afterwards, I wend to Salle Auriol for the Sunday fencing. I seem to be doing better with point control and defense again...thank goodness! My first tournament is next weekend.

18 January. Steyr surprise and soft reins.
I'm still so psyched about Mom sponsoring my Steyr. I can't wait to start trainig with it since my scores should improve dramatically. The Steyr will put me in line with the level of competition that I should really be working at.

In other news, tonight's riding lesson was all about soft reins. Laura had me working on stroking the reins to keep Pet under contral rather than muscling my commands with my arms and shoulders. It worked great. Mentally, I thought back to when I did the "no-hands" drill on the lung line down in San Antonio. I felt a lot smoother and was able to relax quite a bit in my canter while riding around in my two-point. No jumping tonight, but I can tell already that my next jumping opportunity will be much improved.

17 January. Four events, three PRs. Yes, its true! I had three personal records today in my training!!!

It started with my shoot...I made my first visit into the 80s with a score of 81 out of 100. I need to get 86 (a 172 out of 200 actually) to get 1000 pentathlon points, so I'm not too far off. Now, I would certianly like to get above an 86, but I'm happy for now. - NEWS FLASH - My new air pistol, a Styer LP10, is on the way. Mom just signed on as an official sponsor. With my scores being in the 80s with my clunky Daisy pistol, I should be able to improve quite a bit with the Steyr. I'm so psyched!

Today, I swam my first 2:40 200yd. I will need to get a 2:30 200m to get 1000 pentathlon points and around 2:00 to be truly competitive (this would give me around 1300 pentathlon points). So I'm about 15 seconds away from getting the 2:30 200m. Fifteen seconds is a long time to make up in the pool, but I seem to be taking 1-2 seconds off each time I do another time trial. More coaching, more pracice, more efficiency.

Even though it was cold and very muddy, I managed to take 32 seconds off my Greenlake time. Tonight I broke the 22 minute barrier with a 21:48. My goal here is to get a sub 18 which would be under a 6 minute mile. Once I hit it I will start running with the Greenlake group on Wednesday which should improve my time even more. Since I have about 15 more pounds to lose - and for each pound you supposed to make up 3 seconds in your run - I should be able to get to the 5:21 average mile soon that will give me the 1000 points in running. Ultimately, I will need to be running around a 5 minute mile though which would give me around 1200 pentathlon points.

Even my fencing went better tonight, not as well as I would have liked, but better than what I've been doing lately. My point control and distance seem to be returning. Still can't seem to find my parries though.

16 January. Best shoot, best swim and back stroke, back to square one, my back holds me back.
Yes, it was a day of many backs. I'll start with the shoot though. I shot a 79 on my 3rd round today (out of 100). I'm pretty pleased with that even though I still seem to have stray shots here in there. I need to get up to at least an 86 to get 1000 penathlon points. My score should improve a lot when I get my next gun as well. I've done well by my Daisy, but its a tank compared to the gun I will eventually get.

I had my best 100yd time yet in swimming today...two 1:17s back to back. This would put me at a 2:34 200yd if I could keep the pace up...not likely at this point, but I would be close. Nice! I need to improve this time a lot, at least another 10-15 seconds to start, but I'm happy with this time for now. I also had some really great backstroke laps, I'm definitely getting more comfortable with the stroke.

Fencing lessons were pretty frustrating tonight. I'm definitely in one of the many valleys I was told to expect in this sport (I'm looking forward to the peaks too). My point control once again wasn't there and I still seem to have a problem guessing and using my strength too much. We'll see how fencing goes tomorrow night. Hopefully better than Monday.

Finally, I had my best run time around Portage Bay yet...18:59. Sub 19!!! I'm psyched. I would like to get this down to a sub 16, so still have a long way to go. I also noted the approximate 3k distance so that I can start racing to that point. It felt really good to get this after my poor performance at fencing lessons. My lower back fatigued pretty early on though, which was the main thing holding me back. I got this occasionally when I started running but not sure why this is happening now. It could have been just bad form or maybe that I had just done the abdomen routine that Ed (swim coach) gave to me. Hmm. We'll see.

15 January. Polo weekend, fast 50s, post-swim shoot, fencing down day. I'm fresh back from indoor polo yesterday. It was the first time many of the horses have been ridden since September, so it was pretty interesting. I rode George Dill's horses this time. Did pretty well on the first horse, but the second horse, Sara, was quite a pill. I did a little better at being in the right places and actually got a couple good plays. But I committed a few fouls and had a rough time staying in play with Sara too. I think I've made to the next level though, I got ran off and piled several times which hasn't really happened before. I drove down with Kevin, a new polo player here in Seattle who used to hunt quite a bit back on the east coast. He did very will and got 3 goals! All in all, a really fun day.

In swimming today, I pulled out some pretty fast 50yd repeats, fast for me anyway. I was doing them at about :35. Need to get down to :30 or less eventually though.

I decided to go ahead and try to shoot after swimming. I didn't expect much, since I was pretty worked over from the swim. I actually did OK though, shooting in the low 70's. Shot several 9s and 10s even.

I didn't do well in fencing tonight at all. I fenced a new guy Aaron (sp?) we were pretty even, but he was very controlled and precise. I felt like I was all over the place, just awkward all the way around. Got spanked by Varney this time. 15-3. Yuck. I've done much better on him, so something is definitely off. I did pretty well against George though, so that made me fell a little better.

11 January. Better shoot, Arboretum run, bigger fences with Pet.
I shot the last few pellets I had to day for my airgun, new boxes should be arriving soon. I did pretty well on both targets of 10 shots, scoring a 73 and a 71. On each I had 8 shots in the black area with the two random shots being...very random. I did finally decide to reset my sights a bit on my Daisy to see if I could get the right alignment (my Daisy shots usually have been low). It seemed to work well on the five test shots I took at the setting.

I decided to go add a cross country run in my weekly run schedule, so today I headed out to the Arboretum. There is a great trail there that goes through Montlake and shore along Lk. Washington. I even got to see the new UW crew recruits doing their drill as I ran along the cut, pretty inspiring to this ex-rower.

It was back to Pet for riding tonight. We did pretty well. The fences were a little higher and we even had an oxer that made for some pretty big jumps with Pet. Laura finally got me to use the right hand position, but I still have to work on keeping my shoulders up.

10 January. The good swim, the strong run.
I had a great swim last night. Although I hopped in the pool right after a two hour nap, I did my best 100yd ever...Nice! Plus, I felt smoother and stronger than ever.

Not the same story for my running tonight. I met up with the Greenlake group and did my run around Greenlake. I pressed the wrong button on my watch so ended up not timing myself. Although I felt pretty fast, the run didn't fell all that great, my legs got pretty fatigued about 3/4 of the way. I ended up being so tired from the hard swim and run, that I didn't have the energy for fencing. I did go and observe for a while, which was actually pretty enlightening, but no bouts. I may try and hit the Bellevue club on Thursday.

9 January. Apologies.
Wow! Its been a long time since I've updated my journal. Please accept my apologies, but I was busy at MY FIRST PENTATHLON CAMP!!!. Pretty exciting, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find a place to update my journal. I will try to have a page for the camp up soon, so please be patient. In the mean time, please enjoy my current journal entries.