Beastly Saturday

More training was on the menu this morning with a swim in Hagg Lake followed by a short bike ride. Naturally, because we had our ration of sunshine yesterday, we woke up to rain. (Thankfully, swimming in the rain is much more acceptable than doing a long ride in it.) We got up and out early, so that we could be home at a reasonable hour. We met up with Luke, (who has recently joined the open-water swimming set) and his recently purchased wetsuit. It was cold and windy. The lake looked like this:

(I’d planned to take more pictures out in it, but that didn’t happen.) It wasn’t the best swim. There was a lot of chop and wind, plus T was not having a good swim. Luke ditched us both and swam out into the middle, so I swam with Todd a while and then sought a more sheltered section of the lake. It was helpful to get some wetsuit practice and I’ll definitely need to get a couple more before the race as my stroke has changed a lot since last year and felt really weird in the wetsuit.

Afterward, T took his wetsuit off to find that his swim shorts had apparently reached some sort of final crisis point and lost all their shape. They were really baggy and see-through in places. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought any other bike shorts so he was out for the ride. I made the executive decision to call the ride, since I didn’t feel right leaving T in a soggy car for an hour or so. (Not to mention, I wasn’t exactly enthused about a cold, wet, rainy bike ride.) We headed back home, after a quick stop for lunch.

We were totally shelled when we got home, so we both ended up taking a short nap. Afterward, we took a short field trip into SE Portland for T to get a haircut and my mom & I to do some book shopping. Then we returned home for my mom and T to have a little Scrabble face-off on my mom’s new iPad. (If you knew my mother, you would be astonished that she owns an iPad. Technology is not her friend.) I amused myself by taking pictures of the action (and capturing some “classic mom” faces in the process… ) This one is my favorite:

I call this one “Are you taking a picture of me?”

And the classic “reaction shot.”

My poor mother…

Our big item on the evening’s agenda was a reservation at Beast, a renowned Portland restaurant who’s chef was recently featured on Top Chef Masters. I’d been hearing great things about it over the years and when Naomi Pomeroy was kicking ass on reality tv, we figured we’d better get our reservations while we still could. (Plus, I was pretty sure we’d be celebrating a new job for the boy from that interview. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. Yet.) Our seating was at 8:45, so we had plenty of time to loaf around the house, get ready and drive over to NE Portland.

Beast is in a really cute little neighborhood:

With the usual Portland touches:

The outside looks promising:

The restaurant is tiny (24 seats) and has a set menu that they serve in two seatings at communal tables. We got there as the first one was clearing out and got to watch them set up service for ours. It’s an interesting way to dine, almost like waiting for a performance to start. Naomi was there, which caused a lot of excitement (including squealing and jumping up and down) among some of our fellow diners. (Portlanders are very different with celebrities than Southern California or New York, where ignoring them is an art form.)

Once inside, I didn’t feel comfortable taking a lot of pictures because it was such a tiny space. (Which is a shame because there were a million that I would have liked to take.) The food was beyond amazing and we ended up being seated across the table from another Seattle couple, who turned out to be chefs. It was fun to talk to them and hear their stories about the restaurant scene in Seattle. (Nothing Anthony Bourdain worthy, but still fun to hear.) The vibe of the restaurant was like a really wonderful dinner party. Intimate, but refined. Should you find yourself in Portland, I highly recommend it.

 

Swim totals

I’d hoped to do a final test to see the difference in my speed from the start of the challenge to the finish, but holiday pool hours and our travel plans got in the way. (I know my speed has improved, but I’m curious about by how much.) In any case, my form is better and my swimming feels a lot stronger. I managed to swim 5 times a week from November 1 through December 26. In November, I swam a total of 23.4 MILES and then in December 26.3 (that’s a little longer than a marathon!) That’s a total of 49.7 miles for the whole challenge. I don’t think my swim totals for the rest of the year were that much.

Now the challenge of integrating the rest of my training back into the schedule starts, but I’m hoping to build on the gains of this focus and get even stronger. I’m even more hopeful that all of this work will translate into faster swim times this summer.

Progress report

(It’s been a while since I’ve bored you with a training post, so here goes… ) I’ve just finished week four of my swim focus and it’s been a very interesting project. I’ve managed to swim five times a week and I had a very helpful session with my friend (and swimmer extraordinaire) Jen, who gave me some very solid advice of where I could improve my stroke. Since then I’ve been immersed in trying to make those adjustments and strengthen all of the new arm muscles into some kind of endurance.

Swimming is a funny sport. It reminds me of ballet, since it’s so technique-driven. It’s a combination of all of these various muscle movements that all have to coordinate for it to work. And you can spend years and years drilling all of these movements and still not master them all. It’s daunting and fascinating at the same time. The nice thing about always having something to fix/focus on is that it keeps the swimming from getting boring.

Because I’ve just been focused on swimming with better technique, I have no real idea of if I’ve gotten faster or not. I’m trusting that speed will come in time. For now, I’m enjoying the journey.

Finding my inner fish

This year I’m trying something new for my off-season time. Rather than do a less structured version of my swim/bike/run training, I’ve decided to pick one of the sports and just focus on that for a little while. So, starting next week, I’m going to focus on swimming. For the next six weeks, I’m going to aim to swim at least five times per week. I have some mini goals within there (learning a flip turn, for example… ) but the primary aim is to just get more time in the water which will hopefully result in being faster and swimming with better form.

This week was sort of a prep for the formal challenge and I actually ended up swimming four days in a row. I’m only swimming for 30-40 minutes in these sessions, but it’s been pretty good so far. I like the simplicity of just thinking about one sport, especially since it’s the sport I enjoy the most of the three. I’ll post periodic updates on my progress, just to keep my accountability up. Hopefully, this all will lead to some better swim times in my races next year. (It can’t hurt!)

Rockstar!

After this week, I wasn’t sure what to expect from today. I had my phone interview scheduled, which was stressing me out a little bit. (Phone interviews are the worst!) During the e-mail exchange, the guy hadn’t mentioned the name of his company but after looking up his name on LinkedIn, I’d learned who it was. In a funny twist of fate, I’d already corresponded with another employee at this same company through one of the leads that a friend had sent me. So, I knew I had a connection to talk about, which made me feel a bit more at ease.

The conversation went pretty well and I knew it was a job that I could do and I liked the company’s product and mission. The guy and I had a good rapport and he enjoyed the funny small world coincidence of my corresponding with the company already and our having a mutual friend that had initially connected me to them. We ended the call with an in person interview set up for Monday morning, which was best case scenario, as far as I was concerned. As I was telling T about how well it had gone, I got another phone call from the guy, basically offering me the job and wanting to know if I could meet at a coffee place in my neighborhood in half an hour. Holy crap!

So, I hustled into the shower and into presentable clothing. We had a good conversation and outlined the projects on the horizon. It looks like it’s going to be a good project and should yield a steady stream of part-time hours for the next few months. It will make me a little more money than unemployment and help give my life some structure, both of which are desperately needed right now. I’ll still need to line up another contracting gig at some point, but I was feeling pretty good. (And it never hurts the ego to have someone offer you a job after talking to you for half an hour.)

I cruised on this high for most of the day and then my phone rang. It was my former boss. The contracting work was going to start next week, despite his being on vacation all week. He gave me a list of projects and a minimum of details. It was going to be weird walking through the doors of that office again, but given that I know exactly what I’m getting into and who I’m dealing with, I think it will be okay. And having another stream of income until I hear back on the full-time gig will be awesome.

I decided to end my Friday with a swim at Ballard’s pool. It wasn’t too crowded and I had the luxury of a lane to myself for much of it. My swim started to feel like it was coming back toward the end of the workout, which was encouraging. All of this called for a celebration, so I pulled out a Groupon I had for a local restaurant we’d been wanting to try and had a little date night with the boy.

The place we were going was called Root Table, a tucked away little Asian fusion place. I hate this place’s logo – I’d walked by it for months thinking it sold third world crafts and tye-dye. Just look at the menus:

But the place had gotten good reviews and seeing the Groupon for it sealed the deal. The interior was cute and filled with carved wooden tables, chairs and decorations. Here’s the boy enjoying the ambience:

We shared a series of tapas and each had a fancy cocktail. Most of the food was eaten too quickly to be photographed, but here are the lemongrass-chicken “lollipops” and my Lychee Kamikaze (both were delicious!)

It was fun to have a little night out with the boy, (especially one that only cost us 20 dollars.) It reminded me that we need to make time to do this kind of stuff, even during these money-stressed times. And it definitely ended the week on a high note!

Showdown at Andrews Bay

M has been doing really well in her open-water training leading up to Seafair, but there’s been a big unanswered question hovering over our heads. How will she do with the dreaded seaweed? We hadn’t been back to Seward Park for swim practice yet and with the race now a week away, it was time to face the music. Luckily, we were still having our sunny summer weather, so we didn’t have to add “dark and freezing” to the list of challenges. T also joined us for the adventure and because of the warm weather, I actually dug out my old sleeveless wetsuit. After the dramatic enactment of “Will I be able to squeeze into a wetsuit I haven’t worn in four years” (Well, not that dramatic – it was totally fine.) we got into the lake.

The start is still rocky and we identified exactly where the rock wall was. The seaweed jungle is still there as well. T swam out ahead into it, basically swimming until it was far enough below him that he could tread water above it. M swam out to where he was like a champ, before I’d even had a chance to get into the water (stupid rocky lake bottom!) By the time I was in the water, they’d swum to where the rock wall was on the actual swim course and I was able to swim out past the seaweed to give M a target. It took me a while to swim to where I couldn’t see the seaweed and I was a little nervous about how much of it she’d have to swim over before she got to me, but M handled it like a rockstar. She put her head down and swam. No tears or panic in sight. (I was very sad that I hadn’t brought my camera along on this adventure to document the triumph… )

After that, we swam out to the buoy that marks the point that boats are no longer allowed to come into the bay, approx 250 yards from shore and then did a little triangular course from there. On the way back, we actually ended swimming right into the seaweed, including a big chunk that hit M (and then me) in the face! If she could handle that, she was going to kick Seafair’s ass next week! We did a few more laps, before calling it a day and heading home. We had M & J over for a nice summery dinner of grilled chicken, veggies, corn and dinner rolls. It was a great start to the weekend.

Forward progress

This week was a recovery week with no structured training on the schedule. I like to give myself a week to do whatever I want, even though it usually still ends up containing some running, biking and swimming. It’s fun to just go out and do stuff without having a plan. I ran with M, rode home on my road bike without turning my bike computer on and generally just did whatever I felt like. Today started our three-day holiday weekend, though you’d have been hard pressed to guess it was 4th of July by looking at the weather. (Stupid Seattle, give us some sunshine already!)

M had a long bike ride to do, so I kept her company on the Burke Gilman. Per usual, our ride was filled with mockery (both at each other and those around us) and occasional bursts of work. M’s been doing really well with her riding and I’m excited to see the fruits of her efforts pay off at Seafair in two weeks.

Because today was the only day that had any sun in the forecast, we had planned to swim at Green Lake after the bike ride. Last year, almost to the day, M and I swam across this lake. It was a very difficult accomplishment for M. She made it across, but the fear/stress of it caused her to burst into tears on the shore. We’ve swum in the lake a few times since then, but it’s always been a very tough thing. Today we had T also swimming, as he’s prepping for Seafair as well. Our goal was to minimize the panic zone at the start of the swim and I’m proud to report that M did brilliantly. We had one bad moment where her shaded goggles made the water too dark and murky, but when she swapped the goggles out, she was good to go.

We didn’t want to swim all the way across, so we picked some buoys to target, which would also give us a chance to practice sighting. I felt a bit like a mother goose, trying to swim while keeping an eye on both T & M, but both of them were doing great. We made it to the first buoy in good spirits with T providing the comic relief of the group:

We swam a bit more all together and then I left to swim across the lake and back, to get a little practice pushing the pace. My biggest difficulty in doing the sprint races is the faster pace. In longer races, it pays off to take the swim a little easier, but not so much in the shorter races. I always wonder what the kayakers and paddle-boaters think of us crazy neoprene people, but I suspect I already know…

After all of that exercise, it was time for some pizza eating and Rockband playing at M & J’s place. It was an exhausting but excellent way to kick off the holiday weekend. Now if we can just start seeing some July weather…

Taste of summer

With Pacific Crest looming on the horizon, (Ack! Two weeks away!) this weekend was all about training. It’s good timing since T has finals this coming week and I needed to stay out of his hair. Plus the weather forecast was G O R G E O U S. I needed to do a long ride on Saturday and had scoped out a route on the Eastside so that I could avoid the crowds on the various multi-use paths. Unfortunately, I was too lazy/stupid to look at the organized century ride that was on said route on the same day. (I thought it was on Sunday, despite it being written on my training plan for Saturday. D’oh!) This meant sharing my quiet country roads with hundreds of other riders of varying abilities. I’d originally planned a 62 mile route, but there was a looped section that was so congested that I ended up skipping it and riding about 50 miles instead. The upside was that I didn’t have to look at my little cue-sheet, I could just follow the crowds. Plus, I got to pass people which is always fun and good for the ego.

I wanted to take a ton of pictures on my ride, as the weather was beautiful and the scenery was outstanding. Unfortunately, I had to focus on training and not hitting/getting hit by crazy people so I didn’t have the opportunity. Later in the summer, when I’m not in hard-core triathlete mode, I’ll do this ride again and take some photos. After I finished the ride, I treated the local Target to a visit in my sweaty, smelly bike clothes to pick up cat litter & toilet paper and inhale a soft pretzel & diet coke. Not a pretty spectacle, but a necessary one.

Then it was home for about an hour before heading over to West Seattle with M for the summer’s first visit to the raddest pool in the world, Colman pool:

(Cue sound of angelic choral music)

It was every bit as awesome as I remembered. The weather was still beautiful. I shared my lane with four normal people, who when spread out across a 50 meter pool weren’t even noticeable. It’s still an adjustment going from 25 feet to 50 meters, but it was still heaven. Afterward, I went over to M & J’s place for dinner and a little RockBand, which T was able to join for a little while.

Sunday brought more bike riding, this time with M. We headed up north for a little break from the Burke Gilman for a 20 mile ride followed by a short, hot run. After all of the riding on Saturday and the hills of Sunday, my legs were not psyched to go for a run, even a short one. (Hence the reason for doing it in training.) I was pleasantly surprised that after five minutes or so, it actually didn’t feel too bad. Hopefully, that will carry over to race day. Usually, starting the run leg is just horrible.

After the ride, I hit up a produce market I’d been wanting to check out and got the idea for skewers for dinner. In my limited energy window, I managed to get groceries for the week and frozen yogurt with T before crashing on the couch. T helped me with dinner and we turned out some delicious steak skewers (Sorry vegetarians, you may want to avert your eyes.)

Paired with some awesome corn on the cob and homemade bread a la T:

It was pretty much the perfect summer dinner. We’ve had these cool skewers for years, but are only now getting around to using them. I’m thinking that will change as we realized how unbelievably easy skewers are to make and how freakin’ delicious they are. It was a busy weekend, but a really enjoyable one. What a difference a little sunshine makes!

It’s Friday, I’m in Kent

A few weeks ago, I’d signed up to do a 2.4 mile swim race in “beautiful” Kent, WA. Why would I do such a thing, you may (rightfully) ask. Well, I wanted to do at least one confirmed open water swim of the distance that I’ll have to race come Ironman day and I always get confused with the suburbs east of Seattle and thought Kent was much closer than it was. The race was at 6:15 in the evening, which ordinarily would be fine, except for the fact that it was on the Friday evening of a weekend I’d planned to spend in Prosser with my friend Erin. D’oh! Luckily, my friend M was up for an adventure and decided to come with me, so I had good company on this crazy adventure.

M picked me up from work and we headed directly to Kent. We left ourselves plenty of time in case of traffic, so of course we were crazy early. This left us plenty of time to check in, wander around, etc. We watched them set up the buoys of the course and yet again I marvelled at how far a 1.2 mile course looks (I would have to do two loops for my race.) Before I knew it, it was time to suit up and get in the water. M was kind enough to take pictures, so here’s the start:

And we’re off:

I started toward the back, as I’d never swum a race of this distance before and wanted to take the first loop nice and easy. I took it probably a little too easy, but made it around the first lap in reasonably good shape. For the first time, I think ever, I stayed right on the buoy line and didn’t swim a lot of extra distance going wide around the buoys. Here’s the pack starting their second lap, or the 1.2 mile race starting, I’m not sure. But the picture is pretty, so it’s here:

And as always with a multi-loop course, I was not excited to start the second loop. It was nice knowing where to site and where I could just put my head down and swim. This is probably me starting my second lap:

It was pretty spread out at the back of the pack, but I still managed to keep ahead of a few people and pass a few others. I didn’t set my stopwatch, but I believe that I probably swam the second lap faster than the first. I managed to do the whole thing in 1:35:30, about five minutes slower than I was hoping for. Given that I’ve never swum this distance, I was pretty happy with that time.

Afterward, M regaled me with some of the craziness that had been going on while I’d been swimming. She’d apparently been told by one of the race volunteers that her cheering was “confusing the swimmers” and they were swimming toward the sound of her voice. (WTF?) She also had some funny stories from the people sitting next to her and I really appreciated that she was willing to freeze her butt off to watch me swim for an hour and a half. As we were getting ready to leave the park, we saw the most ghetto-tastic ice cream man of all time. M was too embarrassed to photograph him with her big camera, so I snapped this stealth shot:

Yeah, that’s a Sikh guy driving a mini-van with stickers on it. It was pretty hilarious and for a minute I felt like I was back on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. (Except that the guy driving would have probably been Dominican or Hassidic instead of Sikh.) After all of that, it was time to hit the road for a three-hour drive to Prosser. We grabbed some coffee at Starbucks, a little fast food drive thru action and then hit the road.

Erin was nice enough to stay awake to greet us, even though it was midnight when we finally got there. We got to see her cute house and meet her two awesome kittycats. We talked a little about our plans for the weekend, then it was time for bed.

Super awesome Saturday

Tonight M & I took a little field trip out to West Seattle to swim at Colman Pool. Colman is this huge (50 meters long) outdoor pool right next to the water. (Photo courtesy of Flickr)

The weather was grayer and cloudier than the photograph above, but it was still an awesome place to swim. Even with numerous people in the lane, there was room to spread out and not feel crowded. I did manage to get hit in the head and the back (?!) by an oncoming flailing Asian guy, but otherwise it was a nice uneventful swim. M did awesome, busting out 800 meters and generally dominating the easy lane.

Afterwards, M & J had T & I over for Coq Au Vin and old photo night. The food was delicious (especially after all the swimming) and the pictures were hilarious. All in all, it was a super awesome Saturday.