Day 10: Strokin'

Stroke: a single completion of the sequence of body movements repeated while swimming in the given style

Good sleep, good food, really really good swim. My endurance in the pool is getting more solid, and I had a lot of good laps doing breaststroke, a little freestyle and flutter kick and frog kick with the kick board.

Felt so good.

We have a visitor tomorrow and I have a lot of running around to do, and then we have several social events that'll probably mildly sabotage my eating, but meh. It's all good. Hopefully I can get my workouts in as planned.

Great. Day.

(Oh, and the weather—if you're curious—was gorgeous. Again.)

Total Weight: -5lbs

Day 5: Powersleeper™

For whatever reason, I slept like 11 hours last night. That's really unusually for me, so I guess I needed it.

I woke up late (a luxury of working for yourself) and went about my usual shizzy: eating, swimming, etc. I actually mixed it up quite and re-figured my food intake for the day so I could eat a delicious burger at Chez Maman. Sooo good.

Tomorrow's a day off, which honestly will be nice. Today I felt pretty worked-over. Like the week of running and swimming and lifting and doing hip exercises and ab exercises and waking up early has worn me out a little. It's good.

I'm gonna turn in relatively early tonight and enjoy my day off tomorrow. I reckon me and @LosBee are heading to wine country! Gotta like that.

(Oh and it was gorgeous out AGAIN and looks to be nice tomorrow, too. Awesome.)

Day 3: Aww Yeah

Late post—just got back from the Great American Music Hall here in San Francisco. I met up with my buddy Dan for some din din, then watched his band OK Go play. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyable show. I'm a pretty jaded concert-goer; on top of seeing shows regularly from age 17 to age 25, I also bartended in a couple rock clubs way back when. It suffices to say I have seen just about everything. Twice.

But this was a truly fun experience. Not your average rock show.

(Convenient—and entirely accidental—timing, I just posted an interview with Dan, the drummer of OK Go at Hella Sound. Peep it out if you're curious.

Anyway, Day 3. Slept like the dead last night, got up, did the hip stuff, did the food stuff, then hit the pool and did laps for about 45 minutes. Freestyle, breaststroke and a bunch of frog kicks with the kickboard. It's cross-training for the Hal Higdon plan, and the frog kick—the kick you do for the breaststroke—is very therapeutic and strength-developing for the hips. So all around a good workout day.

Last night and tonight were both social eating and drinking nights, but I've basically been tweaking my diet to account for the beer and the restaurant food while staying (roughly) in the 50% carbs/35% protein/15% fats macronutrient breakdown and the 2200 calorie range. 2200 is a lot of calories to play with, and I'm glad to have such room to move. I'd be royally screwed if I was down to 1800.

Anyway, tomorrow's running and strength (plus all the other stuff). It'll be good.

*yawn* Goodnight.


Total Weight: -4lbs

A Pool. A Nice Pool. A Very Nice Pool.

After my horrendous experience at the Potrero 24 Hour Fitness pool I scrambled, looking for other available pools to get my kicks (as it were). Rossi Pool in San Francisco got a good review (and doesn't require a $60/month membership), so I gave it a go.

What a great experience. The pool was very clean, with incredibly wide lanes. They use the counter-clockwise lane share method, meaning you can have multiple people swimming in one lane and instead of going back and forth you move in a circular fashion. The lanes are divided into Slow, Medium and Fast, so you're not swimming up anyone's keister. And, in the event you want to go a bit faster than the retired person in front of you, there's plenty of room to pass them. The etiquette for all this is posted on the wall, and everyone seems to get along harmoniously.

I probably spent a total of 30 minutes in the water, 25 of which were doing frog kicks with the kickboard in the slow lane. And yeah, even though I was doing frog kicks I still passed some folks. But hey, if I'm like these folks and swimming when I'm 90 it'll be a miracle.

I bounced to the Medium lane to do full breaststroke, and the Fast lane to do some freestyle, but this whole thing is about working on my hips. And I think I got some good work in. Swimming, along with the hip exercises I was given, seem very effective. Hopefully I get what I'm looking for out of this.