Sunday, March 05, 2006

Well, since I left you all hanging...

http://tinyurl.com/7oema = my Philly Marathon

Seems only fair to let you know what happened!

Since that marathon, so busy, haven't had much time to come back to here... so by way of catching up...

After the marathon, I did a couple more races... Brian's Run in West Chester... a 10k I enjoy and in which for the first time ever, I won an award! I've actually had faster times in this race, but finally, this time, being in the 55-50 age group seems to have helped... and I wasn't too unhappy with the time so soon after a marathon either!

My other December race was a 5k in which I won my age group... and again was happy w/ my time... and with being able to run with no pain. Seemed as if the knee problem mentioned in the article was temporary!

Small track meet in early January, with unremarkable times in the mile and the 3k... didn't help that I'd taken a fall that twisted my back... fortunately recovered from that and today plan to run a 10k.

Also got into another masters' swim group. This one is not as close to where I live but due to other commitments, the coach of the other one has not been able to continue the workouts at my nearby Y. However, the group I'm in has been terrific in helping me get back into good swimming shape and has been a factor in helping me recover from that fall!

And just a reflection about yesterday's workout: A few new people joined, and so there were more people in the beginners' lane where I've been swimming. The beginner workouts are shorter than those in the other lanes, but until yesterday, I was either the only one in that lane or sharing it with one other person.

I didn't know how I'd feel about sharing it with three people, and starting off, things were a bit awkward b/c we had to do kick only on alternating lengths (with regular freestyle on alternating lengths). There were 2 200s of this, then came the regular swimming for the rest of the workout. But during the initial repeats, there were some collisions. Fortunately, we all managed to be good sports and polite about it and there were a lot of "sorry's" and "excuse me's."

After the first 200, I checked my watch and noticed that I had gone faster with the kick laps than I had when I did regular 200s on my own, so I wondered if I'd lost count. Did an extra 50 just to be safe. Then, later, after one of the 100s, I noticed again a much faster time than usual. This time I knew I hadn't lost count, but how could it be that I'd gone so much faster? (Granted, still not very fast by Real Swimmer standards, but faster than I'd ever gone in practice--in either masters' group!)

I thought it out later, and decided there were several factors involved:

--new swimsuit...don't laugh... less drag and a psychological lift
--my focus had changed from trying to get across the pool fast to trying to "harmonize" with the others in the lane. I didn't even feel as if I was swimming that fast so was very surprised by the times.

Lesson learned: getting out of the "comfort zone" of having a lane to myself or almost to myself, which at first felt awkward, created an opportunity. I'm trying to take that into my life too: be patient with the situation, "go with the flow" and sometimes things work out (or in this case, I worked out) better than expected.

Okay, gotta get ready to go...

Hope I come back sooner than five months!

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