Learning

I should be in bed now but my computer restarted itself and since it is on I figured I will share my excitement.

First of all let me tell you that ice-cream is not a good recovery meal (in case you did not know this one). I have learnt that hard way on Saturday because it took me 2 days to recover from that race. I felt like crap on Sat afternoon, on Sunday and I was still little off yesterday. But to my excuse, I planned the race to be fun and nice leisure ride and thus I did not bring anything nutritious to eat afterwards and instead it was treshold 2+ hours effort.

So instead of 90min aerobic bike ride yesterday, I did a recovery 90min ride, just chilling and enjoying because I could not push pedals hard enough to keep my HR up.
Also did swim, which was mostly just flopping in a pool working on a good form.

But I was 100% today. And I had awesome training day.
I did elliptical: 10min w/up, 3x6min hard w/ 1min easy, 5min c/d. Those 6min effort were like mile repeats effort, or at least that's what I am telling myself. I have no idea. I got my HR up to mid 170s on the first one, then to 180 on the 2nd one and to mid 180s on the last one. So that might be about right. But I have never wore HRM for mile repeats, so I am just guessing.
But good thing is that I have not felt ITB at all doing them. I felt it on Sun while on elliptical but not today. PT told me to be careful even on elliptical because it is a weight-bearing exercise. Thus I decided to try to "lock" my feet in position and do not bounce on elliptical because that's what I was kind of doing to simulate running as much as possible.

Also I have upgraded to weight-bearing PT exercises because until now I have been doing only non-weight-bearing exercises. But PT told me to wait until later this week or next week before I try running to see how ITB responds to these new exercises. I hope it responds well!!!

And then I did a swim and it was awesome. Swimming has been pretty good in past 2 weeks. I think that I am still living on a placebo effect of my new improved form. Because now I keep telling myself that I do not need to work that hard, just keep nice form and time will take care fo itself. So far it has been working.
Ok, I have been also working hard but I can hit my paces with less perceived effort.

And I am becoming smarter about swimming. Before, when I got tired I used to let my form fall apart because it feels like a lot of effort to keep a nice form. I would let my elbows to drop, feet to sink and just started to go like a windmill because I thought that it will get me to the end of the pool faster. It was like cutting corners. But that does not work. Now I know that when I start to be tired I need to work on keeping a nice form even though it feels like an extra work. At the end, maybe it is extra work but my times are faster.
So I am super happy about my swim for now because I have been exceeding my expectations. It will be like this until Michelle realizes that she should give me faster paces to hit, then the misery will start again I guess. Unfortunately I think that she has already realized that:(
Part of the workout was 5x100 with paddles and bands. And I did it! I remember times just few months ago when I was not able to do 25 without dragging my feet at the bottom of a pool. And now I can do 100s no problem!

Ok, now off to bed.