So competitive!

Nationals 2011 was a relatively good swim meet for me. I made 2 finals, in the 100 and 200m butterfly, so technically I achieved my goal for 2011. Of course my times could have been better, and I could have placed better than 8th in both races, however baring in mind my struggle with injuries and job in the last 2 years, I can be only happy with these results. With the competition just behind my back I was thinking about quiting swimming a lot. That same week was quite an emotional up and down roller coaster I really didn't know what to do and had a lot of doubts. Until a friend of mine, Trevor Algatt, reminded me with a very cute poem, which I still keep for future rainy days, that I could be just tired. Big thanks to you, Trevor! You really saved me a lot of regrets.  So I decided to keep on swimming until I am really ready to quit happily, without any what-if's. But first I took 2 weeks off and saw the chlorinated water only about 3 times in that period. However I continued to go to the gym regulary. What can I say, I am just another (hyper)active person, who cannot sit still for too long. I am really enjoying the TRX and the Kettle Bells right now. It took me one week to get used to this training again and one more week for me step it up - more reps, more sets, heavier weights. It came so far that I took the challenge of one of the personal trainers at the gym- Gerald. Let me tell you about Gerald. He is easily 25cm taller than I am, weights about 25kg more than I do, has a body fat percentage of about 4%, his biceps is about the size of my thighs and he can jump like a kangaroo. Yes, I tried to kick this guy's butt. A short while after session begin I was soooo happy that he had time only for 1h, because I was so "hating" him already. But would I admit it in front of him? No way!!! I didn't make a sound, I didn't frown, I was actually successfully smiling and joking and even continued exercising 1 more hour after he left. In fact, I  partly did kick his butt, depending on the exercises, and I still pushed my limits in the next hour- afterall, the efford must be continuous throughout the training, right? But on what price? Very shortly after this session I had muscle ache even on muscles I thought I am not using and I wasn't really able to controll my arms and legs for an entire week later. Why the heck am I so competitive? Why couldn't I just do what suits my fitness level instead of pushing so far out my comfort zone? I could have many excuses for not trying hard, starting with my sex and size, and no one would even question them. But would I do that again? OH, YEAH! The pain was absolutely worth it! :)

PS: Follow Trevor on twitter @trevoralgatt

Second Day Down

A friend of mine just came back from training camp. Training camps are supposed to be hard core and I am sure it was. The only thing I heard from her though is "I hope the weather is nice so I can chill outdoors". How convenient it must be to be able to plan rest and stress? Unfortunately I have little experience with that. I can handle stress, I never negotiate with my coach about easier training and I can push beyond pain. However when MY body needs rest, it just takes it. There is no such thing as "I will go on for 1-2 more days". It simply crashes. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the pools and the gym sare closed. Which means REST. And I was looking forward to that day for two weeks now. It was supposed to be THE planned rest day... Unfortunately my body and I have different opinions about that, again... and I never seem to win that fight.

72 days out...

I am very nicely surprised right now seeing that I am 72 days out of Nationals. For some reason I kind of had it wrong yesterday thinking it was about 65-ish. Technically, I just gained a week, ;)

Being so close to THE day, I started organizing the paper work necessary for competing overseas, entering those results in the Swimming South Africa's (SSA) database and looking at some test swim meets. For making my result count in SA I need to bring with me a ZIP file or send a link to SSA. I hope it works out nicely. Sometimes results get published very late and if I miss the deadline of 3 months, they won't count... which happened 2 years ago. However, now it is not the point when I should be thinking about this.What is important now is training, nutrition and rest:

Training is gong pretty well so far. Now it is the time when I am supposed to "kill" myself and this is exactly what am I doing. For a second week in a row I am swimming lots of 400s- not bad for a person who couldn't handle even 200m butterfly one month ago, right? Believe it or not this is my preparation for my 100m race. As you know I need to catch up a bit with my training and increase my endurance and this the best way to go. After a week of bad muscles aches I started getting used to the huge volume of training... well at least half of me. Right now I am giving myself heart attacks every time I swim, because I am not sore anymore and I can push so much harder. Swimming and dry land training won't get any easier soon. However, I am getting some help- my coach is back on deck!!! It makes a huge difference. It is so hard training on my own- I cannot push myself as hard as my coach can push me, no one can, and secondly, knowing that he is there helps me focus even more on what I am doing instead of thinking of resting and how I am the only person from the entire squat in the pool right now.

Here's my new favorite main set of all times, which I did yesterday evening:
x3
400 Fr (~ 15sec Rest) + 400Fly (~30sec Rest) + 400IM (~30sec rest) + 400Fr (~1min Rest).
It is a quite hard one, however very enjoyable....or perhaps this is the reason why I enjoyed it so much?! Believe it or not the 400fly and 400IM are my favorite parts. :) I wrote down for you the approximate rest intervals between the 400s rather than starting times, because I assume you will have different starting times than me anyway. Favorite or not it is very tiring and I hope I won't do that one any time soon again, haha. I assume coach will come up with something even more challenging though. ;)

Probably the advanced swimmers and athletes among you know the rules of performance orientated nutrition: eat healthy everything according to your training schedule however if nothing healthy around, just get the calories you need and go back to healthy food asap. And when I am saying "everything" I really mean it right now. You cannot believe the amounts of food I am shoving. I eat almost every hour and still wake up hungry in the middle of the night sometimes- 4 eggs, 2 pizzas (I know I know, this is not healthy!), 250g steak, 250g green salad and spinach, 100g pasta, 2 large potatoes, 125g cottage cheese, 3x50g choc bunnies and many more choc eggs (what? It is Easter after all!), 100g yogurt and oats... this is my list for last weekend's (!!!) munch. I hope I don't need that much food over next weekend as well, otherwise I will be broke much earlier than I ever thought. On the other hand I lost 400g body weight over the same weekend and with all that training I really don't believe I lost muscle mass. Sooooo, do you still want to take me out for dinner? :D

Have happy Holidays and good luck to those running the Two Oceans Marathon!

hugs, Nora

Hopes And Doubts

With only 83 days to go to Nationals I am kind of starting to get nervous. Will it be worth it to fly all the way up just for competing? Will I do well at the swim meet? Did I have enough time to prepare and did I use this time wisely? Was my new training plan and training schedule working out for me?

Unfortunately I will have answeres to these question only after the swim meet.

83 days are a very short time and it will go by quickly. Coaches say that if you are nervous prior a swim meet means you are ready, otherwise you wouldn't really care. Coaches also say that after the swim meet is before swim meet- you just finished racing and you already starting preparing for the next one or for the next year's event. I do agree with all of that. Unfortunately this is not he case right now. I didn't have an year. In the entire 2010 I was swimming only then and off because of an shoulder injury. In the first 1-2 months of 2011 it wasn't any different. My training times are so inconsistent that I don't really have a clue where I am right now- once I swim close to a PB or even faster, then I simply drawn. So, yes I am damn nervous. Is it possible to be training properly for only 4 months and to swim good times at National level? And what am I going to enter with anyway? I am not a sprinter; I cannot explode off the blogs. I need time to accelerate. But is my stamina enough to keep up my speed and technique over a longer distance? On the other hand as a pure butterflier I have not really a choice of events. Perhaps the smartest thing is to focus on one - the 100m. I will probably swim the 50 fly, whcih is on the first day, toget a feeling of the swim meet. And freestyle as a warm up before the 100m fly. I don't think I will be entering the 200m though. I haven't trained for it at all. I cannot even remember when it was the last time swimming a 200m butterly set in training... It is on the last day of the competition and I have no other events on that day... Should I just do it for fun and see how close to the top 8 I can get? It will hurt... very badly. And I don't like showing weekness. There is nothing worse for me than dying on the last couple of meters to the wall. And with dying I mean really badly dying. When you can barely move foreward.

Just thinking about all this makes me want to go to practice 4 times a day. NO! I need to stay rational and smart. Overtraining won't be in my favour either. I have 2 more months to train hard, one week of each is meant as short training camp) and 2 weeks for tapering. Keep your thumbs crossed for me! I really need lots of good luck.

If you also have any suggestions for me, regarding my dilema, please share it with me.

Keep training smart!

hugs, Nora

First Week of Four

After the last not that pleasant to read blog, let's to continue with something else. I call it absolute fun and  a life style, for some might be still... oh well... freaky.

As the swimming season comes to an end and there is not much time left to THE swim meet of the year, training becomes harder and harder. Do not think that for the rest of the year we swimmers just splash around and enjoy ourselves. Improving means pushing the limits. However at this stage the limits are pushed more often and we come further out of our comfort zone each time. With only few days left till Nationals things become more serious. After only one mesocycle (4 weeks of training) for 2011 behind my back  I decided to get more  out of my swimming and started recording my heart rate (HR). This way I can not only record how much effort I am putting into practice and how I recover but also can calculate the optimum amount of fuel (kcal) I put into it. I know all those calculators are not really 100% accurate. However they give you a good idea to begin with and you can follow up the changes. Also, for me, it is a motivation factor - not only I have to make my starting times in the pool and the reps in the gym but also I have to make sure that I it is all effective and the HR is perfect indicator. Honestly, I was absolutely shocked as I first recorded my HR. It was so damn high - 172bpm during the first set and an average  for the entire session of 132bpm. I wasn't surprised that I "died" (tired off) so quickly by the end of my swim. However during the warm down and 2 min afterwards my HR dropped quickly. I was relieved. It simply means that I am fit enough to go on with this intensity and volume. everything has a limit though. I was so lucky that last week was the 4th week of the last mesocycle, so I could take it a bit easier and rest.  I had only 3 swim sessions and one weight session. I even slept through the entire weekend and watched movies. I just felt like that.

So here am I again at the beginning of the new mesocycle, in the middle of the very first week. The intensity is not that high yet, but the sets are long, the rest is short and there are as good as no days off. I even survived the first triple training day- a 1,5h swim at the AM and a 1,5h swim followed by a 1h dry land session at the PM. My average HR for those sessions was 140bpm, resulting in about 2.100ckal burned. Adding also the 8 working hours in the office I had a very long day. I had 3x breakfast, 2x lunch, 1x afternoon snack , a huge dinner and it was still very hard to cover those calories. It is a very wrong conception that athletes can everything. You do not want those empty calories like white sugar, animal fats, chips etc. I don;t know how hard it could have been if I would be totally into McDonald's and KFC and struggling to eat healthy. I consider myself very lucky that I just prefer healthy food. Usual nutrition for me is oats meal for breakfast; fruits, preferably grapes, for a snack; carbs and salad for lunch; maybe yogurt for desert; whole wheat bread with peanut butter and honey for snack; and carbs, protein and salad for dinner. Sure I like cake (had it today, yumm), ice cream, french toast and similar, however it is more important how often you eat healthy food and how often you "cheat". The only thing you shouldn't give me is caffeine. Do you know Hammy from Over the Hedge? Well I am kind of similar. Give me coffee and you won't stand it being even 5min with me. I bounce of the walls so badly, that I cannot even use it as performance stimulant - My body pretends to have so much energy that I completely exhaust myself. It is one of those moments when I am repeating that I am not tired and jump around and in the next second I am firmly asleep.

Talking about training let me give you some details. Two blogs ago I mentioned my friend Jess, who is a biokineticist and helps me with my training. I am trying to train with her at least twice a week. She does completely different training than my swim coach. Both training is performance enhancing but the difference between a coach's training and a bio's training is so obvious. My coach does only swim specific dry land training, targeting muscle main groups, that are mostly involved in swimming, and he does a lot of sets of the same exercises. Jess does absolute functional training, targeting also smaller muscle groups, which support the big ones, doing less sets but bigger variety of exercises. Training with Jess, I am still in the stabilisation phase. And I was so happy to see the foam roll yesterday. It made me think "Yay, stretching". Well, we didn't stretch... at least not then. We did abs and oblique training on the foam roll. I was absolutely amazed. I am a personal trainer myself and I studied with the most functional orientated program ever for CPTs (NASM). But biokineticist are an absolutely different caliber. And the best part is, that I am not only training with a bio, but I am also gaining experience for my future as a personal trainer. Thank you Jess for the great support. I really appreciate it! :)










PS: If you want to use Jess' services a biokineticist please give he a call on 079 5325978.


 

Worst Disease of Humanity

When I was growing up, I was taught to always compare myself to others. Unfortunately this comparison wasn't meant in a good way adn it was aleays confusing a good reason to walk away. Fortunately it didn't stick and it messed me up just a little bit ;). I got to hear words like "look at the neighbour's girl. She is so elegant and tall, and she wares dresses. Why don't you never ware dresses". "And she can speak 4 languages... and she is getting up at 5am to study". The worst part of all those and other related stories about the neighbours or whoever else was that the half of it wasn't true. Everyone knew and talked about what anyone else was up to or has done already. The stories never ended, and actually with every single day they mutated and were even further away from the truth. People just couldn't let go. And please if you are unlucky and get dragged into a conversation like that, never ever bring ANY other nation into it. Do not even think about it; gossipers can apprently read minds. All of the sudden the gossiper is an expert in life in the US, Germany, France, Brazil, Ice Land, and wherever else although they've never been there. Oh you want an example of gossiper's topics? I do not know where to start. ALL great athletes must dope for the average person to feel better; all great students must cheat for the average (or simply lazy) person to feel better; all great musicians and writers must be on drugs for the average person to feel better; every single person in the world, especially a celebrity, must have a really bad habit for everyone else to feel better about themselves... Will that ever stop? Unfortunately not. Jealousy is preprogrammed in human nature. It can be already noticed in 5 year months infants. However humans abuse this feeling. There is nothing competitive or motivating about jealousy. Envying would be more appropriate in any case. It is a definitely a more healthy feeling. Remember, that it is not enough to talk about people backs and to create stories about them and then smile and pretend you like them in front of them. Jealousy is always connected to low self esteem and sadness over perceived loss. Live, and let live!

First Day Down

This didn't take too long, did it? Do you remember what I told you last time about me looking forward to training but I am also aware that there will be ups and downs? Well, today is the first of those days - I am mentally and physically absolutely drained. I noticed that at lasted yesterday as I had to quit training and drag myself home, where I almost fell asleep over my supper. The last a couple of days I was also quite moody and the only thing that kept me going was the thoughts of my goals. I guess this is far they can bring me though. I know that I didn't keep my new year's resolution that I will never interrupt training for whatever reason. And my coach also didn't believe me that I am that tired, although last year he has sent me home for smaller reasons. My friend Jess also looked at me a bit weirdly as I walked to say that I am not going to train anymore this day. I am not sure if it was just my weird mind that made me have the feeling that they were thinking "You ain't achieve your goals if you continue walking out of training for nothing". Honestly, this thought made me feel bad. Was I really overreacting? As I walked home, I almost dropped off my bags and drove back to the pool. Luckily I didn't do it. I wasn't and I am not overreacting. I almost fell asleep eating and barely managed to walk up the stairs to my bedroom. This is not overreaction, this in not me being moody or annoyed. This is me being tired. I slept 12h through and I am still tired. I do admit that also the emotional roller coaster that I am going through for a week now has a lot to do with it. However, a burnout is a burnout and I need to take care of myself before I go on or I ain't get far. The good news is that am not fed up with my training and I even had some really fast times this week. I took entire 5sec off my 200m backstroke training personal best time and was able to go on a 5sec quicker 100m Ba starting time. I feel that I am stronger, which was confirmed by my chiropractor and by my friend Jess, who helps me with good core strenght and stability excersizes. I meantioned she is a biokinetiscist, right? I am so glad she is helping with my training. Her excersises are so much fun and so effective. Oh ja, here's her number if you need a bio to help with your training on 079 5325978. Right now I just need to take a day off, to sleep out and get my body and mind rested. ( Oh well, I am not completely resting, I still need to go to work ;) ). Everything else will just follow. Next week I will start doing some freestyle again. I hope to able to do also some single arm butterfly and some breaststroke. I need to remind my muscles how it is done correctly. I am so looking forward to the day when my impingement troubles will be gone and I can attend regular practice again. I miss swimming butterfly so much. After all, it is my personal stroke.
139 days left to Nationals.