It's really smart to have a coach (and a tie-dye update)

Tie-dye update
OK… I intended my tie-dying efforts to be for race-day shirts. I can’t wait, though. I’m just so darned happy to have ridiculous shirts and thrilled they worked out that I am putting them into rotation.

On Monday I wore Purple Rain for strength training. The majority of votes prefer Purple Rain – on Saskatoon Triathlon Club, C95, and Runner’s World – but after some internal debate I defiantly prefer Iron Spiral. I set out to make a traditional tie-dye spiral and I succeeded. Purple Rain was an afterthought and, thus, my heart is with Iron Spiral. This looks like good advice, too (from Bruce Gordon): “Wear the Iron Spiral. Remember you will have an Ironman finishing photo and it will hide your bleeding nipples, vomit, spit, gatoraid stains, grass stains, lipstick and tears.” Purple Rain in action at the gym...

(Heather points out that my short clash. Oops. The exercise is roll out the barbell and then roll back.)

Swimming update
My last entry was regarding the challenge of swimming. I wasn’t feeling very good about things. Today, though I feel awesome about swimming. This is the value of a coach.

I swam for an hour with Coach Paul today. Here was the workout:

Warm up
100 m free
12 x 25 – Catch-up, pull, and swim
Main
6 x 50
3 x 100
2 x 150
1 x 300
Cool down
4 x 25 full out

I can swim. I can swim without break for an extended period. And, I can relax in the water and bring my heart rate under control if I start to feel uneasy despite it running c. 160 beats/minute.
I finished the day feeling good, confident, and looking forward to getting back into the pool. Matter of fact, I was confident that I could have simply swam 1500 m. That's good. Thanks Paul. This is the point of having a coach. Well, one of the points.

I hope to swim a 36 minute 1500 meter swim this summer. Secretly, I dream of 33 minutes.
As a side note, my 10-year-old son is starting with the Lasers Swim Club so Paul will be his coach too. He has a much better chance of making the Olympics than me. I am pretty sure I am past my prime.

In other notes, the turn to cold demoralized me. I did not run yesterday. I was supposed to run a hard interval. I will put it in tomorrow instead so it will be a long day… hard interval, swim, and bike. But, I have Saturday off and that will motivate me to get through the day.