Yikes, it’s been almost 6 weeks since I last posted! Time has flown by quickly, and a few things have been keeping me busy. I organized my first swim/fundraiser event, discovered the thrill of cold-water swimming, and started my one-to-one personal sessions with coach.
In a nutshell, it’s going fantastic. This year, I bit the bullet and signed up for a more intensive personal coaching package through my swim club. I meet up with coach once a week, sometime if we’re busy it’s by email, and he reviews my nutrition, my training plan, and so forth. We’ve been focused on two things: nutrition/weight loss, and committing to a sensible training schedule. We’ll move on to other things later, but for now it’s going really well.
I’m following a structured eating plan created by coach (still veg, to his dismay, I believe), it takes some prep work, like cutting up my veggies the night before and really thinking about what goes into lunch and supper to get the right balance. But it’s worth it, I’ve lost 12lbs so far. Which is great, nothing fits anymore, I had to hold up my jeans one day while out walking the dog, but it’s great. And generally I feel better, my meals are healthier, I’m more energetic, I’m happier.
Still a ways to go, but it’s starting to show physically too. And with a smaller tummy I’m finding body roll in freestyle much easier, surprisingly, which leads to better arm clearance over the water, so my stroke is slowly improving as well. We’re still swimming outdoors, hopefully losing body fat at doesn’t impact my ability to deal with cold water, this is just way too fun!
And swimming, between eating well and sticking to the training plan, swimming is going much better. I’m doing about 8-10 hours per week right now, Mondays and Fridays are a full 3 hours consecutive, so distance is building up. I did 7km one morning, and hope to keep up the momentum. Overall distance to hours is on track, I’m where I planned to be at this point:
More importantly, I show up no matter what, and try to swim well regardless, even if I’m tired or unmotivated. Sometimes I even lead the lane, which I hate, I guess it’s good for me to be pushed past my comfort zone. My stroke is stronger, but I’m still miserable with sprinting short distances, give me 400s any day, that’s my kind of sprint anyhow, if you know what I mean.