Spin, spin, but actually there is no black circle.

[gary_bart]

Sorry, that's a Pearl Jam reference, and isn't even relevant. If I haven't edited it by the end of this, I was too lazy to. (Of course it's possible to find a better heading for a post).

It looks like the c25k intervals are quite "natural" ones for a programme of steady progress. When I went over to spinning, I just used the podcasts from c25k to structure my spins, and I fell back to Week 5 to compensate for things like the pause between the change, and for the fact that some different muscles are involved. Well 5 + 5 + 5 was quite enough to challenge me without killing me, and now today 8 + 8 worked the same, but almost killed me.

I've discovered that I can't watch someone scoring a try and spin at the same time. I slowed down occasionally to what would be a "walk" for just a few seconds, being distracted by the New Zealand club rugby that was playing on the screen to my left.

It's still pretty much all work and now play, this spinning. It's a grunt from the very start, and you just have to switch over to "donkey gear" and try to forget about when it will all end. Nevertheless, I think it's doing the job, so that'll do for now. I suppose at some point I'll have to do some "hills", but that can wait. Let me first just "do c25k", and then maybe start experimenting with the programmes built into the machine. Either that, or I can dial in a "hill" every now and then, and see how long I can endure it.

I actually think I might switch further toward the swimming. I also went swimming today, and it was good. Well "swimming" as in loafing around imagining that I'm resting my spine nicely, most of the time. I swam bits of crawl, trying to teach the right hand side of my face how to breath properly again (I've become an entirely left-faced swimmer it seems), and at the very end I did a 50m length of crawl, followed by a return doing breast stroke. It was quite tiring! You forget how long a swimming pool can feel. I know this has nothing much to do with either running or "surrogate running", but it's amazing how much some feedback can help. Today I swam breast stroke much faster than I have ever swum it in my entire life. The reason is I decided that the responsible thing to do is to swim with goggles, and now I see what I'm doing better. I used to look where I was going without goggles, but it's nowhere near as good as the "goggle view", obviously. So I was able to look at the effect of my breast stroke kick (the feedback I was referring to), and by just changing the rhythm, and the direction, my kick is now finally propelling me forward. I'm quite chuffed. Might even switch from being a crawler to a breast stroker ... just so I can talk in socially awkward terms about my little discovery of how to do the breast stroke kick. Looks like there might be some life after running, after all.

Edit: Forgot to mention this. Cost of swimming in our local pool if you buy the book of 30 tickets: R5-00 per swim. At the moment it's about R20-00 to the pound, so we're talking very small numbers of pennies per swim. That's even cheaper than spending the petrol to drive down to beach, swim in the sea, and get shouted at by lifeguards.

[Mary_O Graduate]

That's an impressive day's workout. Well done!

[gary_bart in reply to Mary_O]

I must just remember to do the swimming before the gymming tomorrow, otherwise I'm going to drown in the deep end.

One thing about having stored abundant emergency food supplies in my skin over the years is that I'm now very bouyant, and quite cold tolerant (relative to what we would call "cold" in Durban). It's best not to be all negative about these things.

[Mary_O Graduate in reply to gary_bart]

I have the same layer of insulation. I tell myself there are no thin whales, but they are the world's most impressive swimmers.

[AvatheGardener Graduate]

When I was mid thirties I used to swim. Loved to swim. 2km/hr each day, breaststroke. Go you for embracing the training across all triathlon elements! 😀