Rotten Tomatoes

What does rotten tomatoes have to do with training for a triathlon you ask? Well it has everything to do with raising kids. You see, when son #2 starts telling me that his tummy hurts, and it feels like rotten tomatoes, you listen. Last week was extremely crazy. Not only was his 3rd birthday last week; and not only were we having a big party and family coming in from out of town; we also had sick kids. It started with the oldest and diarrhea. Diarrhea to the point that it was uncontrollable for him at times, and there were multiple underwear changes. Poor guy. I thought that the rest of us had skated by it when no one else had gotten the diarrhea. A couple days pasted, and while #1 was almost better, there was no sign by anyone else that trouble was brewing. But on early Thursday am, #2's official bday, I woke at 3:45 to hear him call out before he started puking. Poor guy, it was his 3rd birthday and he had just covered his entire bed, and parts of me in vomit. After cleaning him up, and changing the bedding, he finally went back to bed ~415. The next am, it was more of the same. You put something in him, something came back up. All the plans for his actual birthday was scrubbed. To top it off, #3 also woke up puking. At least #2 can tell us when he feels like it's going to come back out, but poor #3, she would just let it go where ever. What else could a 15month old do??

So we had sick kids, family coming into town and the madness of work. Fortunately, by the time Saturday came around, and everyone was in town and the party was starting, we had been puke free for over 24 hours. We had to be real selective about what we tried to feed and drink the two of them for a little bit, and even had to put #2 on some Zofran for his vomiting. But everyone was looking and feeling pretty good on Saturday and we had a great party. Awesome weather, so the kids were able to play outside on the trampoline and in the back yard. We had no major injuries and nothing was broken in the house. Everyone had fun, and we even ran out of beer. Other than the beer issue, we had a great party.

 Needless to say, it was a very busy week with everything. Throw in trying to train for your first ever triathlon, not to mention one that's a decent distance, and things got even more complicated. I've been running short on sleep lately, and hope to get to bed early tonight.
Really, the last week of training has been a blur. I kind of remember what I did, but not completely. I have it written down on scrap paper here and there, but still haven't found the time to log it into my journal. I do remember that I had a good 40/10 brick a while ago, got some good lifting days in (which seem to be slipping as of late) and did manage to get a nice 10mile early morning run in the other day.

The other big training news is that I have contemplated changing my swim technique yet again. I find that this might be a little dangerous being soo close to the event (less than 11 weeks right now). I stumbled upon a web site called swim smooth. I was intrigued with there philosophy about the freestyle stroke, and they definitely seem more geared to the real world of open water swimming and competing. They are not big fans of the Total Immersion (TI) system, which is what I have been doing up until now. The theory about the swim smooth is that TI over emphasises the glide, which looks wonderful, but isn't very practical. It promotes a dead spot in your stroke; isn't practical when there are 15 million other people around you swimming as well; and isn't easy to do when you have rough water from swells and other people's wakes. Swim smooth doesn't encourage the lower stroke rate like TI does either. There is a relationship between speed and your stroke rate, and it's ok to increase your stroke rate if you are also increasing your speed. The other big thing that swim smooth encourages is the bilateral breathing (breathing from both sides) and not holding your breath while you are swimming.
So I've been experimenting with the bilateral breathing, and the constant exhalation. It's definitely a mental game to breath on the weak side and no hold my breath. My 100yard splits are, right now, faster; but I'm not able to keep that momentum and do any real distance, yet. I'm definitely working harder, my left side is starting to catch up with my right. I can feel it by how winded I am at times, although it doesn't feel like I'm moving faster. I'm easily 8-10 sec faster on the 100's, but in the water I don't feel like I'm actually going that much faster (if that makes any sense at all). I've also been working on keeping my head more upright, being able to see the far end of the pool while I swim, and not just the black line on the bottom. I think that this has helped me with a better positioning for my breathing, especially on the left, and has helped me with my rotation as well. I will continue to work on the bilateral breathing for the next week or two and see how it goes. Swim smooth claims a two week adjusting period for the transition to bilateral breathing. I will also be increasing my swim volume and looking to build my endurance with the bilateral breathing. If it goes well, I'll be able to put out like I have been before in a couple of weeks. If not, well then I still have what I had before and it was working decently well. I know that I'll be able to finish the swim portion the way things were before, now I'm just going to work on being able to do it a little faster. Now it's off to bed, to get some much needed recovery before it starts all over again tomorrow.