More Haste, Less Speed

Last night's cycle home started off a bit shakily as it was the first time ever that I had attempted to ride home in rush hour traffic. However, once I'd made out of the City and up into Shoreditch, it wasn't so bad and I joined what looked and behaved like a "cycle train".  It was light enough and busy enough for me to cycle through Shoreditch Park and I made pretty good time on what was an otherwise uneventful journey.  I went to my friend Rod's house on a special mission (more on that another time) and then cycled very, very quickly to the pub for the weekly quiz.  I'm not quite sure what the landlord made of me when I turned up carrying a bicycle folded in half (still with my rack pack attached and the handlebars on), my helmet on (complete with flashing light on the top) and dressed only in fluorescent things, but the expression on his face was priceless.  All in all, cycling from home to work, from work to Rod's and from Rod's to the pub, I cycled 19.63km yesterday. This surprised me, as it didn't feel like that far, and it's quite a lot further than the actual cycle I have to do in the triathlon!

Ooh look!  Page 2!

Sadly, we didn't win the pub quiz this week, and once I got home, it was more or less straight to bed for me as I had to get up early this morning for more swimming.  I nearly didn't make it to the pool this morning as the train I have to get in order to be able to do my full session was delayed by 11 minutes and I had just missed the previous, also delayed train.  Those 11 minutes would put me right on the cusp of "can I fit it all in?" but, when the train came, I didn't feel like I'd been waiting an extra 11 minutes and when I checked the time it was actually only four minutes late (in fact, I think I ended up being earlier than normal at every subsequent stage of the morning!)

Once I got to the pool, I realised that it was exceptionally busy in all of the lanes.  There just wasn't room for anyone else in the medium and fast lanes (although some people did keep trying to squeeze in, much to the disgruntlement of the incumbents) and ploughing up and down doing crawl in the slow lane wasn't going to impress anyone.  As a result, I decided to modify my session slightly.  After the four length warm up, I decided to do the secondary set of the main session first - four lengths of crawl legs only.  I got a float and went up and down.  With each kick, I could feel the lactic acid from yesterday's cycling shaking down into my toes.  I think my feet must now be entirely full of lactic acid.  And oh, how it burned!  By the end of the set, I was ready to give up and go home, but then I realised the pool had cleared out a bit, so I really ought to carry on.

As I was really good for nothing by this point, my seven sets of two lengths of crawl were going to be taken very easily and I decided to stick with the slow lane even though the other lanes also had dwindling numbers.  The combination of my weariness and the need to not go too fast in the slow lane resulted in a minor revelation for me - I don't panic about breathing when I'm going slowly!  I even managed to try a couple of breaths to the right instead of the left!  I'm not sure how much of this is about the actual pace, how much is because I've improved in my training sessions to date and how much is because I wasn't exerting myself sufficiently to be out of breath, but whatever the reason, I found these lengths much easier than I had on Friday.  In addition, I needed much less time to recover in between repetitions, making the whole set take a much shorter time (about 5 or 7 minutes less), even though I was swimming more slowly.

Once I'd finished the main set, I did a couple of lengths of cool down, making a total of 720m, meaning I've swum 1.92km in total so far.

Finally, I had some brilliant news yesterday.  A lovely friend has offered to lend me her wetsuit and tri-suit for the triathlon.  I may need to shed a couple of pounds before I can get into them, but at the rate I'm burning calories at the moment, I don't think that will be a problem.  The best thing is that the tri-suit has zebra stripes on!  Some of you will know how much I love stripes, so I'm very excited to say that I will more than likely be doing this triathlon dressed as a zebra!!! (Well, sort of.)