Friday Four

1. I had to do last week's long run on my own because I had a friend coming to town for the weekend, so I decided it was as good a time as any to try to pick up the pace a bit.  Since I started PT I'd been taking it very easy and hadn't really tried to see how my butt would respond to a bit more effort.  My plan was to run it as a progressive long run and back off if I ever got to a pace that caused pain.  I ended up being very pleased with the paces that I was able to run and I didn't have pain during the run.  I was, however, pretty sore for the rest of the weekend.  I was hoping it was the "right" muscles that were sore (because they were finally working) since it was not the pain that I was having before.  It's so hard for me to differentiate between all the muscles back there.

2. When I started swimming again in January, I knew it would be a good idea to pick a distance and time trial it every few weeks to track my progress. I debated between 1000 and 1650 and went with 1650 because it was closer to the actual race distance. So obviously that would be a better marker of my progress, or at least that was my rationale. Last week when I prepared to do my second time trial, I really wished I'd picked 1000 the first time. It's just a much more reasonable distance!  But I felt like I'd committed myself and a 1000 time just wouldn't be quite the same, even if I was looking at pace per 100.  I'll think more carefully next time I pick a TT distance for a future training cycle.

3.  I've discovered it's extremely relaxing to lie on the floor with an ice pack on your hip/butt.  I don't know why, but I almost fall asleep every time.

4. To reward myself for all of this swimming (and in advance of a big swim planned for Saturday), I picked up a new suit on Wednesday.