Energetic and Playful!

05/28/09 - Bike

Just writing to share some of my excitement. Up until this point, I've just been kind of blindly riding my bike on my weekly rides. This is the area that I like and know the least about. I begrudgingly have to pull out my bike a few times a week, knowing that at some point, I am going to hit a hill that will kill and possibly defeat me! That is, until last night! We've started a new weekly group training that involves coached drills and technique for cycling. Think of it as track practice for biking!

I arrived last night, feeling pretty apprehensive, even considering leaving... I road my bike to work, and thought, I could just keep on going past the ride meet-up and straight to the house. Well, this wouldn't really help my training, so I decided to suck it up and see what this training had to offer. Worst case scenario, I'll just turn around, or cry, or worse yet, walk!! HA! (I had imagined some pretty bad scenarios of never ending hills!) Our coach was of course, due to our club's exceedingly high standards, an elite athlete. He had wonderful ideas and concepts about how to approach biking, that had me looking at the sport differently, and actually feeling relaxed about it. But, even better, we got drilled on technique. FINALLY! This is what I've been missing out of this program!

We did some pedaling technique and just lapped around a 2 mile block. Then, it was on to some drills, where you're in your hardest gear, at a very low speed, and then very quickly increase speed and hit a hill, while maintaining that hard gear and never lifting off your seat. This was great. The coach just watched and pulled us in each time to give us advice on updating our technique, moving from our core, staying stable on the bike, not pulling on the handle bars, keeping your back flat... before I knew it, I was increasing speed in a fluid motion, and at a great pace. I was so happy with myself, that at the end of practice, I literally whistled my whole bike ride home!

05/29/09 - Swim
Really nice swim this morning. I'm not sure what it was about it, but I felt like a kid this morning... energetic and playful. I did some 500m repeats, a few pulling sets, and then did some drills from the old days of water polo (head-up freestyle)... man is that hard and fun! I actually think that it's great for building up the arm muscles, and am adding it to my repretoire! Also threw in some other strokes, I did a few sets of butterfly, back, and breaststroke. Sure, these strokes might not be essential to my training, but they were fun. By the end of my 1900m's I just wanted to stay in the pool and play around. Which is what I did! I did a little underwater swimming, followed by a couple of somersaults, and finally floated on my back.

While I was floating, I thought back to the days when we'd get to swim practice, only to find out that it was a fun day... this meant no organized practice, and often involved an oiled up watermelon! These were the best nights of the entire summer! I've got to find someone in town with a pool, I don't think my summer will be complete now without pushing an oiled up watermelon through the water!