More good luck

I have had some great luck this week (especially today)! Okay, I didn't win the lottery- but it was still a pretty lucky day today!

First of all, I got my bike fixed. My bike was making awful rattling noises, for the past month or so. My dad (who is great at all things mechanical) took a look at my bike. It turns out I had the d@mn thing out of gear!

I don't ride my bike for 2 weeks- thinking something was seriously wrong with it. I thought my bike was going to fall apart or something. The only thing wrong with it: the bike was out of gear! Hahaha. I'm an idiot.

I also went to the bike shop today. I have a $70 dollar store credit there. This is because I didn't like a bike computer I got there (the computer was supposed to be held to the bike through rubber bands...yeah). I decided to spend the store credit on some slick tires for my ever-so-slow mountain bike.

It turned out that they didn't have the slick tires, however. They were out of stock. They said they will be ordering them very soon and will call me once they get a new shipment. I can't wait to get them! They are supposed to make you a lot faster. At least that is what I read on one of the triathlon forums I like to visit.

You know another thing that might make me faster on my bike...inflating my tires! When I took my bike into the bike shop (thinking the mechanics would need the bike to put the tires on it) they told me my tires were almost flat!

I never said I was smart...

In other news, road bikes are supposed to make you faster (duh-uh). I never knew how much faster though, until the guy told me (unless it was a sells pitch...).

He said that if I go 13-14 miles an hour on a mountain bike (I wish!); I could go about 18-19 mph on a road bike. I know a piece of equipment isn't a guarantee, but that sounds like a HUGE speed increase to me. I don't know exactly how much faster a road bike would make me, but I am sure it makes quite a bit of difference.

I really want a road bike (or better yet, a tri bike).Too bad I don't have that much money! The road bikes in the store cost a minimum of about $650. I'm sure a triathlon bike would be even more expensive. I only have about $1,000 saved up, and I want a car WAY more than I want a fancy bike.

I will get a road (or tri) bike eventually though. I just need a lot more money! Those bikes are so pretty...

Okay, enough with my greediness. I still haven't written about my awesome swim workout today. Yes. Another awesome swim workout. I have been having many swim breakthroughs this week!


I swam 6000 yards today! Did you hear that? 6000 yards!

I finally had enough time to swim today to finish this workout. Normally my attempts get cut short because I have to leave the pool a lot sooner. I've tried several times to finish this workout, but today I actually had the time to do so.

Are you ready to hear my workout?

Okay, here goes...

1000 free
2 X (500 SKIDS*)
1000 free
5 X (100 IM, 200 free)
500 free
200 back
500 free
300 IM

* 500 SKIDS = 100 swim, 100 kick, 100 IM, 100 drill, 100 swim

I'm actually, surprisingly, not that tired; however, I was incredibly hungry when I finished. I ate about 1,000 calories of food tonight, and am still a little hungry. Other than that and a little tiredness in my arms, I feel fine. I feel very relaxed too. A long swim (or any other workout) has amazing powers of relaxation.

I am so glad I got my bike fixed today. I actually miss riding it, and am eager to ride it first thing in the morning!

Just when I was getting discouraged...

I thought I would never improve in triathlons;however, just when I was getting discouraged with my performance, I had a major swim breakthough. Last night, at the end of swim practice, we did 2 X 25 sprint. I normally do these 25's in 17-18 seconds.

Last night I did one of the 25's in 16.6 seconds. I couldn't belive it. I thought the coach messed up with his watch, or the pool somehow shrank. I knew however, that pools didn't shrink and watches are usally very accurate. In my state of disbelief, I stepped up to the blocks to do another 25 yard sprint.

I plowed though the water as fast as I possibly could. My new time: 15.6 seconds! A whole second off of what I thought would be my best time! This two second improvement was only off a 25. I can't wait to see what my times are going to be like in the longer swim races. Too bad I will have to wait untill October for my next swim meet.

It is weird the way that fitness comes. When you first start working out, you make huge improvements all the time. I remember last year when I was first getting into shape: almost every workout would be my longest or fastest swim/bike/run ever.

After a few months, these improvements would begin to slow down. I would continue making small improvements here and there, but my times and distances would pretty much stay the same. That is how everything has been for the past several months. Now, however, I must have hit one of those huge jumps in improvement.

I can tell because my arms and legs (especially my legs- from all the biking and running I have been doing) are starting to feel a lot stronger. Have you ever had that happen during a time of getitng into shape? Your arms and legs just feel stronger?

I am sure the reason I am experincing such a huge leap in fitness is because of the twelve to fourteen hour training weeks I have been putting in this summer. I have recently been doing about 2 hours of training a day. Before this summer, however, I only trained about 7-10 hours a week. I think since I have been increasing my training so much since June, my body is finally having a chance to absorb all the extra workouts.

However it happened dosn't really matter. No matter what, I can not wait to shatter some of my previous best times during the next swim meet in October!

Oh, and some more great news: I can finally do another triathlon. I havn't done a triathlon since the beginning of May. I kept asking my parents if I could do one these past two months and they kept saying "no". They said this because because there was a whole bunch of other thngs going on through out the past few months, such as swim meets and my grandparents visiting for a month. The month of August is pretty free though. I finally have parental permission to do a triathlon Aug. 24! All I have to do now is get registered for the thing!

The triathlon is called the Great Buckeye Challenge. It is in a town called Springfield (no- not the Simpson's Springfield) only about 45 minutes from home. I am hoping to do the "mini" distance. It sounds really cute, right?

Wrong! It will be my first olympic distance triathlon. 1000m swim/24.9 mile bike/6.55mile run. I am so excited and nervous- but with a name like "mini" how bad can it be?

This Disney character would enjoy herself in the triathlon:



I hope I will too!

Week of 6/29-7/5 workout totals: Prepare to be amazed!

I normally don't do workout totals in this blog, since no one really cares, but I have to post these totals. This is the biggest workout week I have ever done! I'm sure sometime in the future, my biggest workout week is going to be even more gigantic- but as for now, this is what I have:



Swimming: 5 hours 55 mins



Biking: 5 hours 11 mins (I never did this much bicycling in a single week before)!



Running: 1 hour 27 mins (kind of puny compared to the rest, but when you do that much swimming and bicycling, you have to sacrifice something).



Yoga: 1 hr 15 mins

Total: 13 hours 48 mins!!!

I bet you didn't see that comming!

Happy swim workout!

Both yesterday and Friday, I swam on my own in the health club lap pool (swim team is only Monday-Thursday in the summer). On Friday, I swam a 5300 yard workout. Yesterday, I swam a 3600 yard workout.

Yesterday's workout was broken up into two parts: The first part was a little over 2,000 yards. The second part was a little over 1,000 yards.

The reason these workouts were broken up was because there was lightning in the pool. This meant I had to get out of the pool for about an hour until the storm passed. During this time, I decided to fo a little bicycle riding on the stationary bikes at the health club.

Unfortunately, there is one thing I always forget to bring when I plan to go swimming, but am not prepared to go bike riding

You guessed that right: Sneakers!!!

Just like a couple of weeks ago, I did my entire, hour long bike ride in flip-flops; however, being the amazingly talented flip-flop bicyclist I am, the shoes did not fall off even once!

I also got a blazing fast average speed while riding the stationary bike: 13 mph!!! If I could go that fast on my mountain bike, then I likely wouldn't finish triathlons in last place!

Maybe I need go bicycle riding in flip-flops more often...

After looking out the window about once every two minutes to see if the pool would finally re-open (I was ready to get off that bike! Stationary bicycling is so boring.) I finally noticed people in the pool after about an hour.

By this time, I had been working out almost two hours and only wanted a quick cool down (hence, my last swim only being just over 1,000 yards); however, there were some obnoxious kids in the pool during this swim!

These two kids decided the funnest thing to do would be to wander into my lane to play Marco-Polo (They had the entire, otherwise empty, pool to do this). They played in my lane for about the first ten minutes of my swim. After wandering away for a few minutes, they decided to come back in my lane to practice their cannon ball skills. They finally left after I unintentionally ran into them while doing the backstroke.

Despite the annoying kids, I had a wonderful swim (like there's any swimming that isn't wonderful!!!). I can not wait for the open water swim meet I am doing this weekend!

I also had a nice, quick 45 minute run this morning. After a cople more long runs, and some shorter runs during the week to build a good running base, I will be SO ready to run a half marathon.

One exam down...three to go

I took my English final today. It was pretty easy except for a section of random quotes characters said in The Great Gatsby. Some of the quotes I don't even remember seeing before. Most of the questions, however, were over plot details and things from other units we studied in English. I think I did pretty well on those sections.

All I have left to take is Spanish, which I am taking tomorrow and am already done studying for. My last two finals will be on Wednesday. I will be taking Biology and American Studies. American Studies will probably be my hardest final, if only for the amount of studying I will have to do.

Then after Wednesday, I am done with school for the year and have three whole months of summer! I can't wait. Only 2 days of school left!

As for my workouts, yesterday I swam 3 miles. I can't belive I am saying this- but that workout is starting to become old news. It dosn't even feel long anymore. I wounder what I can do this summer to challange myself in the pool? I am thinking of adding some speed workouts. I am SO slow and would really like to be able to go faster.

My two-a-day workouts that I am doing this summer are also starting next monday. I am thinking of doing two-a-day workouts on Monday-Thursday, resting on Friday, and doing some longer workouts on the weekends. I don't know yet. All I know is that I am extremly ready to start training for a half marathon and an Olymplc-distance triathlon this summer!

Speaking of summer, here are my results from a flip-flop test:

What Your Flip Flops Say About You

You are an outdoorsy person. You feel most comfortable in nature. Beautiful scenery and good weather always brighten up your day. Being outside allows you to feel calm and connected to the world. Problems don't seem so big when you realize how small you are in the scheme of things. Your ideal warm weather place: Costa Rica

The Flip Flop Test

Happy almost Summer everyone!

Outdoor pool opened today!

The outdoor pool opened today! I swim in the indoor pool, however. The reason is that every 45 minutes in the outdoor pool, everybody under 18 years old has to get out of the water for 15 minutes. This is Ohio law. They were on one of those breaks when I arrived at the pool, so I decided to swim in the indoor pool, where they don't make you take those breaks.
I swam for 2 hours, and swam a total of 4400 yards. It was a nice workout. Though the weather is not that much warmer yet, I am still excited that it is amost summer.
On another note, I got a new slogan:

Your Slogan Should Be

How Do You Handle a Hungry Man? Amy.

The Slogan Generator

Awesome Swim meet!

I am doing the most awesome swim meet June 28! It is an open water swim where I get to swim 3000 meters!

That is like doing four 750 meter sprint triathlon swims. That is twice the longest event in a swim meet-the mile. I never did a swim meet that long before. It should be exciting!

Good morning!

Yes..It's 10:24 A.M. on a Thursday. I should be in school right now. Don't tell anyone! I missed today because we had a 3 hour play in the afternoon that I didn't feel like sittling through. I only missed one other day this semester so it is not like it counts for anything. I really didn't feel like sitting through one of those plays. The plays are normally 2 hours, which already feels like an enternity. I really do not want to sit through 3 hours!

I swam for an hour yesterday. It would have been more, but my coach got really angry at some people. he stopped practice to give a 20 minute speech on why the whole team wasn't taking swimming seriously enough. He must have been really upset because my swim coach is normally a very easy going, nice guy. I have never seen him yell like that before. I am definatly going to work a million times harder then I already have been working because I do not want him to get mad again!

I am planning to do an Independent-Tri this weekend perhaps. It would probably be a duathlon.that I would do it after a swim workout. I would make it about an hour. Since i am oh-so-very-slow, that would mean a 2 mile run/4 mile bike/ 1 mile run. Something along those lines. I'm not quite sure yet.

The Yoga confilct is resolved

I am loving the warm weather here today! 76 degrees! Yesterday I finally made it to yoga practice for swim team. We normally do yoga once a week, but there were conflicts about finding an appropriate room to do the yoga in (most of the rec rooms are being used for other things such as aerobics classes at the time we need them for yoga).

First, the yoga was scheduled for Mondays at 7:30 PM. Then, it switched to Tuesdays at 7:00 PM. Later, it switched to Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. FINALLY, it switched back to Tuesdays at 7:00 PM. I kept getting confused, as you would imagine, and showed up for yoga class on the wrong day.

I also showed up half an hour late on days there actually was yoga class. This was because I did not know of the change, and swim practice starts normally at 7:30. I would show up at 7:30 for normal swim practice and end up missing yoga. As you can tell, I was glad to finally make yoga class this week.

I can tell that this week will be a big workout week. Normaly, on Wednesdays after working out 3 days in a row, I would be exhausted and would have to take the night off. Today, I feel energetic enough to go to swim practice. I am only planning on taking one day off this week. I hope to get as much, if not more, training time this week than last week!

Swim-a-thon: Part 2

Today was my second day of the swim-a-thon since I swam another swim-a-thon on Friday. (Get it? Today was part 2.) I swam 100 laps again (down to the end of the pool and back- It bugs me when people call one length of the pool a lap) for a total of 5000 yards.

I enjoyed my swim-a-thon today. I don't feel as tired as I did on Friday. Maybe that day of rest I took yesterday actually helped. The one thing I didn't enjoy however, was that there were 3 other swimmers in my lane. Very fast swimmers. They kept running over me every other lap. It was very annoying. As I was getting kicked and bumped, all the while, I was looking forward to when they finished their 100 laps and got out of the pool.

Eventually they got out of the pool and I had the lane all to myself. No kicking or brusing. Yeah! I got the lane to myself for about 20 minutes. I was getting the nice, wounderful feeling I get when I do a good, hard workout. The only thing that wasn't so good though was that I really had to pee. I'll save the details, but all I can say was that I was very excited to be done with the swim so that I could run to the bathroom.

When the swim-a-thon was over, I felt a little tired, but not extremly. I only felt as tired as I normally do at the end of swim practice. I wasn't very hungry this time and still havn't ate a snack. It felt really awesome doing 2 swim-a-thons in a weekend. I was the only one on my swim team to do 2. I love distance swimming, as I said before. I wish they had swim-a-thons more then once a year. Every week would be nice. Maybe twice a week. Three times...

Swimming laps+ 2 hours=happiness

Today was the wounderful swim-a-thon (part one-since I am doing another swim-a-thon on Sunday). I loved it. All together, I swam 5300 yards. That was the longest I ever swim! It was really relaxing swimming all those laps on a Friday night. I am very wounderfully tired now. I am the kind of tired that only comes from a nice, long workout.

I shared a lap lane with one other person. That person normally is a very fast swimmer. I am usally the slowest swimmer on the team. (I honestly mean it- I love swimming but I am really slow!) Today, for some reason, she was swimming really slow. Even slower then me. She was probably very confident that she would make the 100 laps and trying to save her energy. She did make the 100 laps!

I neve swam a swim-a-thon before so I was sprinting so that I could swim the entire 100 laps on time. I must have lapped her about 10 times in the whole practice. It was pretty nice being the faster one in the lane, instead of being the one getting run over- even though come practice time, she can swim circles around me.

The swim-a-thon was supposed to be 5000 yards all together. I actually went a little bit over the designated distance. The reason is that I went an extra 100-200 yards because I did not realize I already finished the 100 laps untill I heard my coach yell my name. I also honestly didn't want to stop! After the swim-a-thon, I did a short cool-down and practice was over.

I'm not as tired as I thought I would be. I am a little sleepy right now, but I normally go to bed in about 10 minutes anyway. I will have a great night's rest tonight!

I was also very hungy! I ate a snack as soon as I got home. I ate outside and enjoyed the wounderful weather. It went up to 75 degrees today! After I ate, I felt a lot better.

Today was a perfect day for swimming. I am very excited that I get to do the same thing again on Sunday. I love long workouts like that. They make me feel on top of the world!

Start of this blog, and long course season in swimming

Hi again. Since this blog is all about swimming and triathlon, I guess I will start off by talking (or writing!) about the workout I did yesterday.

I did a 1:50 swim workout with the swim team. We are starting to get into the summer swim season (long course) so the swim workouts are starting to get harder again. For the past month or so, we have mainly been working on drills to make our swim strokes better. Now we have been doing a lot of endurance stuff, which is my favorite type of workout!

Our main set was 3,000 yards. I left the workout feeling so wounderfully tired, the way I always feel after a long workout. I was hungry too! I actually ended up eating two dinners last night. I ate my normal dinner around 4:00 and had to have a second dinner after my workout. don't think I'm a pig or anything. I'm 5 ft 1 and only 90 pounds. I'm actually trying to gain weight.

This has been my first year on a year- round swim team and I am loving it so far. This will be my first summer swim season in a long course pool (50 meters long instead of 25 yards) and I am really looking forward to it.

I'm going to have to start my long course season a month later then I would normally be able to. Instead of starting the season in May, I will have to start it in June. I can't swim any of the meets we have in May because I am going to take classes to become a lifeguard. The classes happen to coincide with the same exact days of the swim meet.

I am very excited about becoming a lifeguard. I hope to lifeguard for 5 seasons, a place with a very nice pool only 5 minutes from my house. It will be my first job!