Week 13 - Back to the Grind and Loving It!

This week started off pretty rough.  I got home at 1:30am from The Amazing Weekend.  My alarm went off at 4:10am to call me back to the pool.  I never heard it.  I woke up at 5:30 instead when my wife got up.  I bolted out of the house as quick as my tired body could handle and got in the pool anyway.  I only had time for 4,000 yards before they pulled the lane lines.  Those yards felt like 4 million instead of 4 thousand.  I was beat.  Mentally, physically and emotionally just empty.  But as coach Dori would say, I just kept swimming and tried to remember to open my eyes before I got to the wall.  Weight lifting in the afternoon was easier, but really it took about 5 days before I felt normal again.  I even pushed my Thursday hard/fast run to Friday and shortened it from the fatigue that had followed me throughout the entire work week.

There were some nice highlights to this week though.  My wife has decided to take up cycling and is going to do a 100km charity ride in June.  She has been doing all of the right things while waiting for the roads to clear of snow, but now she is starting to get anxious to get outside.  She also has a goal to ride the entire length of the Erie Canal (~360 miles) as part of a multi day tour next year.  This, of course, made me very happy.  So now I had the challenge to find the perfect bike.  The perfect bike would be one that has enough pep out on the road so that we can ride some miles together while I'm training for The 444 but also has the right frame geometry to accept a nice big tire for the Erie Canal ride which will mostly be on fine gravel with occasional ruts.  After a bunch of research and visits to 5 bike shops I helped narrow the choice down to the Trek Domane or the Specialized Diverge.  One of the bike shops was able to bring in 3 different trim levels of the Specialized Diverge so that she could choose between them.  I was secretly rooting for the Diverge E5 Comp.  It was the most expensive of the 3 options, but it had the best components (Shimano 105) and it was the only one with the Future Shock.  The Future Shock is a 20 mm spring in the headset.  I thought this feature would be killer for the canal ride.  It also will take road tires as small as 28mm and knobbies as wide as 42mm.  She started off with a ride around the parking lot in the lesser Diverge E5 Elite.  It was still a fine bike.  She looked like she was nervous, but having a blast whizzing around the parking lot.  In the end, the Diverge E5 Comp won out (yay!).  I was surprised that they were able to get it ready while we waited so we were able to bring it home the same day.  The Pink Flamingo looks like it will be a lot of fun.  I'm really looking forward to getting out on the road together for some miles this summer!

On Friday, I got in the pool at lunch time to get a recovery swim in.  As I left the office, I told my coworkers that I was taking a long lunch to do my part slowing the spread of the coronavirus by chlorinating my entire body.  The swim was going fine.  I was just swimming 500 yard repeats at a comfortable pace.  About halfway through the swim I was surprised when a huge fish went zipping by in the next lane a couple of swimmers away.  I thought he might be doing the butterfly, but didn't catch a look at the right time to know.  I just know that I went from being the fastest guy in the pool to someone that looked like he was going nowhere fast.  It must be a college swimmer.  He was just so darn slippery in the water I was amazed.  At the end of one of my 500 yard swims I looked up.  It was the fish.  I know that fish.  It was Rob.  For the last 5 years I swam with the Rochester Area Master Swimmers (RAMS).  Rob was a really nice guy that I almost never interacted with because he swam in the fast lane.  I did not :-). We got chatting and I love his story.  He is essentially an adult onset swimmer.  The thing about adult onset swimmers is that they almost never get to be fast.  Case in point, me.  Rob is the exception.  He went to college at a university that requires every graduate to show a minimum proficiency in swimming to be eligible for a diploma.  He failed the swim test which led to a remedial swim class so that he could squeak through and graduate.  Many years later as an adult he came back to the pool and went from the slow lanes (before my time) to the fast lanes.  He is now goes to the national age group championship every year.  He has qualified to compete in 7 different events!  Amazing.  I'm in awe.  He was at the pool trying to put the finishing touches on his stroke because the next national meet is 6 weeks away and he is hoping for a national top 10 finish in at least one event.  He has one of the most inspirational stories that I've heard in a long time.  Getting a chance to talk with him was definitely one of the highlights from this week.  In between our great conversation I got some more yards in and he moved over to the same lane when a spot freed up.  I accidentally shorted my last 500.  I popped up at 450, told Rob I was done and got ready to leave the pool.  Rob told me that I was not done.  He convinced me that I needed to sprint 50 yards.  Why not.  Fate clearly wants me to swim 50 yards hard so that I can finish with 3,000 yards instead of an unsatisfying 2,950 yards.  He had me wait until the clock got to 0's for the seconds and told me to go.  I took off and was flailing everything in every direction.  My swims have been for recovery only.  This swim felt silly, but fun.  At least it did for the first 12 yards.  That is when my left calf muscle started to cramp.  'F' it.  Keep going.  Then at the 20 yard mark with an ungraceful flip turn about to follow my right arch/foot cramped.  Crap.  I flipped and the push off from the wall actually helped a bit.  I was still cramping, just not as bad.  I flailed for 25 yards, touched the wall and came up laughing.  That was such a fun, painful way to finish for the week.  Good times.

I want to end the post right here...

...but there is more to talk about for any of you that are still awake.  I've been having ankle pain.  Back in November I was diagnosed with tendinosis of the hallucis longus tendon.  Over the last 3 weeks I've been optimistic that all of the strength training and physical therapy had put the problem behind me, and it might have, but now there is a new problem.  I've been having ankle and foot pain on the opposite side of the same foot.  I have a torn tendon on that side from an old ankle sprain.  Around the same time that this pain started, I had begun being very bad about keeping up on my physical therapy routine.  I'm not sure what to do at this point.  It hurts the most when I walk.  It bothers me little when I run and not at all when I bike.  I bought a flexible brace that I've been wearing for about 3-4 days and it seemed like it had been improving.  Getting past an injury is never that easy though.  Today I had the pleasure of a nice long run with my friend Rae.  The ankle felt fine for the entire run, but on the way home yet a new pain showed up.  At this point I don't know what exactly I'm going to do except wait until tomorrow and see what still hurts.

Day after update...the ankle got a little less cranky after a night's sleep.  I was afraid that there were now 3 problems, inside ankle (old), outside ankle (new), Achilles (newest).  I don't think there is an Achilles issue.  I think the inside ankle (hallucis longus tendinosis) just came back with a vengeance after being almost non existent for the last couple of weeks.  I'll get back to more stretching, PT and make an appointment with the chiropractor for some myofascial release ASAP.

And now the post was supposed to end but...

While I was writing the previous paragraph my wife came back from her very first ride on that new bike!  She looked a little nervous and very happy when she left.  She didn't look the same when she returned.  We live next to a liftbridge that goes over the Erie Canal.  When she was crossing the bridge on the way back she got too close to a construction barrel, lost control and ran into the steel bridge superstructure with her arm.  She was home within a few minutes, but it was already black/blue and starting to swell quickly.  A trip to an urgent care facility confirmed that she didn't break anything.  She is clearly a full fledge cyclist now.  When she came into the garage, hurt and upset, the first question that she asked was, "Is the bike OK?"

Weekly Stats

Swim - 7000 yards
Bike - 105 miles
Run - 39 miles
Body Pump - 2 times
Heavy Lifting - 2 times
Duration - 17:14 hours

Physical Therapy - 0 times

Body Composition

Weight - 207.8 pounds
%Fat - 16.8
%Water - 54.9
%Muscle - 38.1

Overall Plan and Progress