Sharing the love

[Day 24]

Rest days are wonderful, but I just watched the Patriots lose in pretty heart-breaking fashion to the Broncos in the AFC Championships so...right now I just want to go pick a fight with someone. I think right after the loss I wanted to cry and eat buckets of Nitya's amazing homemade fudge for hours on end, but a little bit of time has passed and I'm now in "I want to fxck shit up" mode. In any case, let us not dwell on that but instead focus on something more positive that happened to me today on my lovely day off!

So the med school hosts a winter formal of sorts every year called the Red Dress Affair, in which you get to wear red and help support the American Heart Association. I wasn't able to attend this year because it was last weekend and I was out of town at Killington with Henry. I did, however, contribute by donating 2 hours worth of swim lessons to the auction. Today, I met my student for the first time (one of his friends won the lesson and gave it to him) and I got to spend about 45 minutes in the pool introducing the wonderful world of swimming to a non-swimmer. It was fantastic!

For context, I taught a lot of lessons during my college years. It was a really rewarding job that paid well and I always got roped into teaching more lessons than I realistically had time for. Teaching was always such an amazing way to share something I love with other people, and I've always been a little bit sad that I don't have time for it now with med school and everything. It was nice just to have a one off opportunity to do that again. The best part is when you start to see the subtle bits of swimming physics (which is so different from substantive-gravity-involving land physics) start to click with the person you're teaching and it's like "Yes! Welcome to my side of the universe!". It was fun, I had fun, I think I needed some of that this week and it was nice to get it in the context of doing something that I really genuinely love.

As for body updates: my legs are sore but completely functional, so the way I like to put it is if I had to live the rest of my life this way it would be totally fine (which is exactly the level of sore I like to be if I have to experience soreness in one way or another). I just stretched and rolled out and am hopeful about the IT band continuing to not give me any problems. I've got a busy busy week (I'm helping organize a couple of talks this week relating to primary care because that's one of my big interests and I'm trying to squash 8 workouts into 5 days and I'm behind on work and life and everything and I have two of my selective meetings this week which means days like tomorrow where I'm in class from 8:30 am to 5 pm so things are a little crazy), but we'll get through. I believe. (:

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Much love,
Jess

Finding that swim groove

My swimming has felt pretty off since getting back into the pool but today things started coming together in the latter half of the workout and that's something I'm really grateful for. I was planning on hitting up a stroke workout tomorrow as well, but I'm really more feeling a gym and soft brick treadmill run in the morning and a long trainer session in the evening (gotta kill time waiting for Henry to get in). It's unfortunate in that it means I likely won't see the pool again until next Monday and taking only one swim this week is really less than ideal, but the way I see it is that the planning and the balance doesn't mean anything if you're not enjoying yourself. I really want to look forward to the workouts I'm doing and even though I would usually be all about a stroke workout, I'm really not feeling it. I figure lifting will at least involve some upper body work, so I won't be letting that drag behind completely and hopefully that will be enough to hold me over until next Monday when I get my next crack at the pool. I want to lift and I want to be training in a sustainable way and part of maintaining that sustainability is indulging myself sometimes when I want to mix up my schedule in a perhaps not entirely balanced way. Or at least that's how I'm justifying this decision to myself. In any case, here was this morning's swim:

Today's Workout: CSP practice, mid-distance freestyle day.
Summary:

• WU: 400 free, 8 x 50 free build (not to a sprint, just to fast) @ 1:00
• Main Set:
• 3 x 200 free moderate @ 3:30
• 4 x 50 free strong 200 pace @ :55
• 200 free strong
• 2 x 50 free slightly faster @ :55
• 100 free MAX
• 8 x 50 kick w/ fins @ :55, 15 m fast breakout fly kick, middle backstroke moderate, last 15 m MAX (written as 10 x 50, but we had to catch up to the other lanes so we skipped 2…)
• 100 easy
• 4 x 200 free @ 3:45
• 1 - fast
• 2 - 50 mod/150 fast
• 3 - 100 mod/100 fast
• 4 - 150 mod/50 MAX
• 4 x 50 free easy-mod @ :55
• WD: 4 x 50 free counting strokes (not really DPS…) @ :55
• Total Distance: 3700 LCM (3800 LCM as written)

Hit rate: 37/40 (92.5%)

It's nice to have some down time this evening without workout obligations. I have to keep reminding myself that a single workout per day for a few days in a row is perfectly acceptable. I'm so used to doubling that it seems outrageous that I'm doing so little. My body feels nice and well-rested though, which I appreciate and know is probably good for me. It's all about the little things in life right?

Much love,
Jess