The weather’s good today and I had some time to spare and a body that wasn’t sore, so I headed out for a twofer: 3 miles running and 30 minutes swimming laps. Whew.
It’s funny; my mileage for this month isn’t awful (I’ll end up with at least 25, which is respectable non-dedicated training miles for me) but I feel like my running performance is stagnant-to-declining. On the other hand, I haven’t been working very hard on it… 3 miles in ~40 minutes on nasty hills is about what I’ve been running for months now.
After the run, I didn’t have much left in the tank for the swim. I think I just dragged my tired legs along for the most part. The last two laps I tried a new drill: 5-stroke breathing. (I’m usually a 3-stroke breather.) Brutal, but it works on some places I have bad habits: 1) I overstride, so the quicker I can turn over my strokes, the quicker I can breathe; 2) I need to fully evacuate my lungs before turning my head to breathe so I get a nice big breath as quickly as possible. You never really appreciate being able to breathe during athletic activity, until you can’t…
