Do Mermaids Ever Get Swimmer's Ear?

Yesterday I added some things to my ever-increasing and handy-dandy informative lists of "Things Not to Do Before Your Long Run." Yes, don't cut your leg off and don't decide that pre-long-run is a perfect day to try walking on coals, of course are on there (you just never know what might sound like a good idea in the moment, if you don't have a list to consult - "Oh sharks don't make great pets for toddlers! Right!"). Here are a few that may sound like no brainers but definitely had to be learned through actual experience:

(1) Do not attempt to make up a weekend of little or no sleep with "one good night of sleep." After my crazy Friday and a week of light-sleeping, I was zonked by Sunday and figured going to bed early would be a great idea. True, but not sufficient to make up for the entire week. I think my feelings of being over-trained often boil down to whether I've gotten enough sleep over the week. Ideally I get nine or more when I'm training, but any less than six and I'm useless.

(2) Especially do not attempt this by taking a sleeping pill to get to bed a little earlier. I think it was pretty much still in my system when I started running, to odd effect. Basically my heart rate leapt up into crazyville (5 miles south of Funkytown) within two minutes of warm up; it would ordinarily take all ten minutes to actually get up to samba beat. The pace I was going at was significantly slower than usual, but if I had been trying the talk-but-can't-sing test, I'd have come off a bit Marilyn Monroe. It took about forty minutes for my body to sort out that initial feeling of being jolted awake and for my breathing to regularize. I was also sweating way more than usual, which would go with...

(3) Don't try to make up for feeling groggy from a sleeping pill with even the normal amount of caffiene. I'm pretty sure that didn't help. I can usually do a run with anything from no caffiene to two cups of coffee and a little buzz in my gu (yes I had to coin that phrase), but I think my nervous system was already stressed, so the extra few milligrams in my my vitamin water stoked the sweaty panty yucks.

(4) Don't underfuel the day before. I was too tired to be bothered with eating dinner, so I grabbed a protein bar and figured it was ok since I hadn't done anything physical that day. I can't eat enough to fuel myself in the morning of a run or else risk stomach troubles and no matter how many gu packets I have during a workout, if my body feels like it's not being fed properly, it is not happy and will unhesitatingly voice its displeasure.

(5) Don't err on the opposite side of caution when it comes to potential injuries. My knee was kind of the final nail in the coffin of a good long run. I torqued it a little dancing on Friday; this was made worse by complete post-dance negligence in stretching. I knew it was pinging on Saturday and Sunday and stayed off of it, but was maybe a little ambitious not to put off my run by a day. My knee never got so bad that I would have stopped on a good day, but considering how tired I already was (and how resultingly sloppy my form was getting), it just seemed like a bad injury waiting to happen.

So, having learned these lessons and deciding I'd learned enough don'ts for one day, I abridged it to a 7.5 mile run, went home and did some strength training instead just to ease my smarting pride (which always flares up when "intense" is lessened to "moderate").

Since my knee was a little tender, I decided this would be a good time to think about my joints a little. I stayed away from any strength training that might put pressure on the knees yesterday and for my cross training day, I wanted to figure out something that would put the least possible stress on them possible. Kayaking was a little too cost prohibitive, so I plunked down some money on a suit, cap and goggles and headed to the pool.

Thus begining Adella's Adventures With Swimming: The Sequel

As the title implies, I've had adventures with swimming in the past. In fact, I kind up grew up sitting on a towel, clad in damp lycra, and sporting severe goggle-induced racoon eyes. More often, my swimming experiences involved watching my Dad at various meets and waiting on beaches during open water swims, but I was once a promising young swimmer in my own right; or at least I was not tragic enough to be barred from being on the swim team for my younger years and awarded the odd trophy or medal. Of course this was all before I started doing ballet five days a week and had to exercise some discretion on the use of my remaining teeny-bopper time.

I had a brief affair with the lap-pool when I was thirteen. The school I was at offered swimming as one of the PE units. Since I was one of two people who actually had any experience swimming I was lumped with a swimming super-star in work-out assignments, while every one else kind of dog-paddled around. I did alright, considering how comparably I out of shape I was, but the swim team conflicted with the school play so I emerged from the lap-swimming-lanes and didn't return until... well, today. Not quite fifteen years later.

I had no idea what to expect today, not having even owned a bathing suit in about four years (underwear virtually counts if you're just bobbing up and down late at night after a dance competitioin). I got a beginning workout from the internet. It was pretty basic, so by the time I finished it up, I'd only been in the pool for about twenty minutes and had to improvise for the rest of the hour. I also managed to alienate all the other swimmers from my "slow" lane - I really wasn't able to do an efficient stroke and hold my own in the medium or fast lanes, but there's a lot of degrees of slow and "not an obese person attempting day one of his/her weight loss program" apparently ought to have a separate lane. Lots of glaring followed by lane-changing occured is all I'm saying.

Anyways, it felt a lot better than I would have expected. I swam for an hour and feel nicely tired, but not spent the way I do after a tough run. I expect I don't have the strength to swim that hard yet. It's amazing how long things stay in the body: I recognized certain things I was instinctively doing as things learned when I was nine or ten. I even found myself following a breathing pattern I hadn't remembered and counting back strokes after passing the flags to find the edge of the pool. I still like breast-stroke best by far and kind of hate butterfly. And flip turns still usually end up getting water up my nose. Anyways, it'll be interesting to see how much I feel it tomorrow, but I'm just happy to have been able to remove myself from the pool absent chlorine-filled lungs and CPR chest-bruises!