I’m often amazed at how quickly the human body adapts. At the beginning of last week it was amazement at how the body dispenses with the resources it needs to be able to perform for longer periods of time. I suppose it is inefficient to keep the various pieces of metabolic equipment at a higher level of capability if it is not being used,

This week the amazement is how quickly the body starts to rebuild it’s capabilities. In three sessions I have gone from 40 lengths needing two breaks to catch my breath to 50 lengths without any breaks, and using another regular swimmer as a reference, I have also increased my speed by 10%.

Another couple of weeks, and I’ll be back down the gym.

(Update: And after another session, was managing to keep up with that other regular swimmer for the first 20 lengths, so up by another 10%).

I was back down the pool this morning after a hiatus of around 10 weeks and it was hard, bloody hard. If this is what getting older is all about then you can keep it.

Only 10 weeks ago I was happily doing 100 lengths, hardly breaking a sweat and doing it in a time to be proud of. Today after only 6 lengths my arms were sore! No way was I going to give in, and kept on going, and going, and going. Someone else who I recognised as being someone I could just about keep up with, before, was lapping me constantly as well.

Anyway, I forced out 40 lengths at a fairly mediocre pace, and have decided to consider it a challange to see if I can reverse the damage in less than 10 weeks!

Contracting in Warrington

I have spent the last few months working in Warrington, and it looks like my contract is going to be extended for quite a bit more. I have had a difficult decision, to carry on working so far from home with one hell of a drive each Monday and Friday, or to hunt for something much more local. The advantage of working where I am is that it is a big customer, guaranteed to pay their bills on time. The only disadvantage is location. That said, quite a number of my colleagues are long distance commuters. One does the journey from London daily. Now the darker, colder (I almost said wetter, but the summer wasn’t great either) weather is here, then getting up on that Monday morning for a four-five hour drive is less and less attractive.

Back to Gym and swimming

Good eating at the B&B has led to a gradual increase in my belt length, and I am starting to see the yo-yo weight loss/gain cycle swing back. So, refusing to give in, I have joined a local gym (in Warrington) and for the last few weeks have managed to get there 4 times per week. A couple of gym sessions and a couple of long swims each week should stave off the creeping waistline. In fact, I have already noticed a small decline.

Cycling at the weekends is on the backburner too, I’m afraid, as Alison has been unable to ride due to her running injury. So, the new cycle roof rack has hardly been used. Oh well, not long till spring.

Drupal odds and sods

I am still enjoying the Drupal CMS, and keep toying with moving this blog back. I have been experimenting with a site with more static pages and less timeline orientated, but still retaining some blog-like features and think that Drupal will give the best of both. I have also managed to do some freelancing on Drupal, so not diluting my skills with yet another system seems a good idea.

iPod Classic

I am saddened to keep hearing rumours that Apple may be dropping the iPod classic as the flash based storage devices have a lot of advantages. I see this, but the 160Gb Classic has enabled me to ditch an external brick I was using for camcorder footage and backups while away from home, so please, please don’t ditch it Apple, until you have at least a couple of hundred gigs of flash on a device.

I am very concious that I haven’t been writing here lately. My career in contracting has dragged me half way up the country to Warrington to work. This involves a five hour drive on Monday morning and again on Friday evening, and staying in a B&B without internet connectivity in between.

This has seriously impacted my non-work personal activities. Monday and Tuesday evening are wiped up by tiredness from the early Monday start and Friday evening by travelling. Wednesday and Thursday are restricted in by lack of connectivity, Saturday and Sunday feel better spent doing things with my family that I haven’t seen all week!

I have a long list of things I want to blog about, and also I have been finding it hard keeping up the physical exercise. I have been managing my 2000 meter swims twice per week, but thats been it.

Hopefully, the routine will settle in soon and I’ll be able to get things back to normal.

Well, since I achieved my main goals then I am thinking less and less about where I am on the fitness scale, and it has become something that I am not constantly talking about. But, I thought it time to review where I am.

My weight is still within the range that I set myself, although it is creeping toward the upper end of that range – which may need some maintenance work to stop it from climbing out of control. This is going to be interesting over the next few weeks as my latest contract will involve some hotel accomodation for the first few weeks as I try and find a short-term let. Hotels spell “DANGER”, as the last few times my work led me to stay in hotels then my weight has balooned out of control, vigilence is needed here, and I am a little nervous about falling badly off the wagon.

Over the last week I have picked up a minor chest infection, leading to a bit of a rattly cough. At the beginning it stopped me from running, although I managed to carry on swimming. Since Friday, though, I have resumed the running – with quite a healthy pace yesterday – it hasn’t been pleasant though, when the rattle gets bad and the resultant coughing starts.

My pace is starting to return to the pre-HRM days, but of course I am feeling much better at the end of the run. I want to start pushing up the mileage, as my dream of a November half-marathon is still there. (Can I believe I am saying this?). As an interim milestone, Alison and I may do the Cancer Research 10k in September.

I caught myself telling a colleague today that I went for a short run yesterday, only a mere 5k – and then realised what I had said. I am certainly changing.

Since her difficult 10 miler at Great Baddow, Alison has been coming on in leaps and bounds. She has been promoted to the upper group now, and definitely belongs there and seems to be improving by the week – it was a plateau breaker for her. I wish I could find a plateau breaker for my running pace.

The swimming still feels very strong, and I am doing 2k front crawl a couple of times per week. I don’t see me improving much more without a proper trainer, but it is rare for me to meet another non-club swimmer in the public lane swimming that is faster than me now. I am mainly doing this now as a calorie burner, as further improvement would require a level of commitment that I can’t give it now.

I had the opportunity to go for a London contract recently, and I think one of the things putting me off was that a daily commute from home would leave no time for a fitness program!

I took James swimming for the first time since the half-term holiday. I’m amazed how long it was since we were going every week before, but what with working away from home, the Swimathon and now moving my training to more of a running orientated regime we just haven’t got down to the pool.

He was really excited to be going, and it ended up being just the two of us as Tiff had a late night baby-sitting the night before. He has really moved on with his confidence in his own ability, and a really proud Daddy swam alongside him for his opening 6 lengths. He tehn refused to go to the training pool, and we spent the rest of the time in the deep end, messing around with jumping, diving, swimming deep underwater, etc. He now seems very natural in the water – a far cry from two years ago where he would fight you if you tried to get him in the water.

We both had a really enjoyable time – a day to remember.

Now I have achieved my goal, I’ve got to not let it go and turn back into a mountain of lard. For me, this means that I have to carry on using DietPower for the foreseeable future, but configured into maintenance mode rather than weight loss mode.

So, I still get a calorie budget to stay within, which moves downward if my weight creeps upward (or vice versa).

The first weekend I had a massive upward swing in weight of 3lb, partially due to water retention in my sore muscles after my Swimathon and partly because of my celebratory Chinese meal (which, fitted in my calorie allowance but has lots of mono-sodium glutamate). A few days later it settled back to my target weight, but I had another upswing of 2lb a few days after that! It looks likely that the maintenance diet will be like this, and it’s something else to get used to.

I have managed to keep up the exercise with regular runs and swims. On Sunday I managed a personal best distance run of 5 miles, and I have been swimming a regular 2km swim several times per week. This helps greatly with my calorie budget. Sadly, my weight lifting has proven more difficult to maintain and I haven’t visited a gym since before the Swimathon. I believe muscle maintenance has been a critical part of my success, so this has got to change.

I did it! 200 lengths of Witham’s Brampton Centre swimming pool, or 5000 meters.

We got there about 45 minutes before the start to find a few people milling around uncertainly and after joining them for about 10 minutes I noticed that the pool was being emptied of the regular swimmers and that a table was being set up next to the pool. Down we went.

The organiser at first told me that I was the only mad one doing the 5000m personal swim, but she was wrong! There were three of us – one guy was aiming for 75 minutes and does regular Triathlons, a lady was aiming for 100 minutes, the same as me.

The start was very informal, just a “you can start whenever you’re ready” we were told. It certainly had changed from 6 years ago, there was no timing this time (my last Swimathon resulted in a certificate with the time and distance, not this time). Alison improvised using the stopwatch application on her phone.

We got off to a reasonable pace, and the 100 minute lady and I were swimming at almost exactly the same pace. I found it quite difficult leading, and let her past – she must have found it similarly hard because 10-20 lengths later she would let me past – and so on for the first 100 lengths. At this point I was on schedule for my 100 minute target.

Triathlon guy was indeed considerably faster, and we did our best to let him past each time he came around, but I suspect that we slowed him down a little. Around 100 lengths I started to flag a little and the other lady pulled away, eventually to lap me at around 130 lengths at which point she started to slow too. I went past at 150 lengths and was intending to do a sprint length or two to open up a small gap since I was again finding too much pressure having someone right on my heels.

As I turned after the first sprint length my calf spasmed in agony and I sunk like a stone. I forced myself to the edge and pushed myself up onto the side, rolling my traitorous leg out of the water and stretching like crazy. The Triathlon guy had finished quite some time before, and he came over and advised me on the correct stretches and a couple of minutes later I returned to the water to carry on.

Of course, now I had not only lost a few minutes, but had a very tender leg that was hovering on the verge of cramp – which meant that I couldn’t push off from the side each length and had to be very careful not to kick too hard. So, the last 50 lengths were quite slow – surprisingly I made up a couple of lengths on the other lady but she still came in a couple of lengths before me.

But, I not only succeeded in my 5000 metre swim – but I smashed my previous personal best by over 10 minutes with a final time of 1h48m27s.

I’m still in training for the Swimathon next week, and have just come back from a 3750m freestyle training swim which I managed in 70 minutes. The only time ever that I have done the full 5000m is the last Swimathon I entered 6 years ago, and I was wondering if I should go for it today. I think we’ll leave it in suspense for next week! I am well on target for beating the 100 minutes that I had set myself as a goal and it looks like I’ll be 20% faster than 6 years ago.

What I have feared is slowly becoming reality. Working away from home is proving to be demotivating for my exercise. The pool isn’t quite as nice as my local one, the gym is nice but 20 minutes out of my way, and it isn’t light enough in the evening yet to feel happy about going out running. And these excuses are a load of bullshit.

I’ve got to kick myself up the backside and get doing it. Why don’t I run at lunch time? The office has a nice shower room, so why can’t I motivate myself? The pool isn’t that bad really, it’s just that I don’t have time in the mornings to swim the distance that I want to do – more excuses, grrr.

Right, I’ll go swimming tomorrow and Thursday mornings, and run Wednesday and Friday mornings – the weight lifting will have to suffer this week, I’ll talk to Stuart about working out a schedule that works better for next week.

By the way, ran 3.8 miles on Sunday, so the exercise isn’t a total loss.