New goals for rest of 2012

It appears as if I am going to come up well short of my 2012 exercise goals. I may have set the bar a bit too high and various injuries and random spells of laziness didn't help my cause, as well. However, I want to finish this year strong, so I set some short-term goals for my remaining 48 days. Here is where I stand so far and what I want to reach by New Years Day.

Swimming: 100.03 miles (need 115)
Running: 125.46 miles (need 183)
Cycling: 475.10 miles (need 730)

Given my knee and shoulder issues, I plan on doing extra bike time, so I set that goal a little higher than the others. I don't have any events in mind for the next few months, so I'm going to have to find some sort of extra motivation. Any suggestions?

Anyway, today I finally got a decent swim in, making sure to alternate breaststroke into my set every 150 yards. Gotta lay off too much freestyle. I also ran a quick mile on the treadmill, just to get my blood pumping before the swim.

P.S.: I finally passed 100 swim miles for the year. I'm ahead of last year's pace, but far behind my initial "Go The Distance" goal of 175 miles.

Total distance: 1 mile running, 1,950 yards swimming

Cortisone shot = No surgery, but still no swimming

Well, today was one of those good-news, bad-news kind of days. First, I locked my keys in the house when I left for the gym, so I had to walk about 15 minutes to get there. When I was done, Jen had to drive home from work to unlock the house for me. Yeah, I'm stupid. Anyway, I went to the gym to try and get a swim in before my appointment with the doctor later in the morning, because I feared it might be the last swim I would get to do in a while. Unfortunately, I was right...



This is the procedure I had done this morning. Yes, it hurt.

The good news was that my shoulder didn't even require an x-ray or MRI, which is a huge relief on my wallet. The doctor could tell I didn't have a tear or any bone issues based off the exercises he had me do. Fortunately, it's still just the same old issue of tendonitis and it simply refuses to heal, even though I've brought my swimming to a screeching halt. I had to get a cortisone injection in my shoulder, which was not fun and that's when the doctor told me the bad news; no swimming for 4-6 weeks. Zero.

It could be worse, though. Surgery would have likely kept me out of the pool for months, so hopefully when it heals properly and I start swimming again, I will start from scratch and work on having a more efficient stroke with bilateral breathing. That way, I don't put so much wear and tear on the one shoulder. It's still very frustrating though. I put off going to the doctor so I could afford to get an x-ray or MRI done at the beginning of the new year, and I didn't even need one. I could have gone in and had this procedure done months ago. I'd probably be back in the pool already.

The doctor also looked at my foot and told me my pain was because I didn't have the right running shoes, which sucks, because I just bought new ones and it's too late to return them now. Hopefully some ice for the rest of the week will keep the swelling down and some good insoles on Saturday morning will suffice to get me through my 10k. I have to revise my exercise goals for the year (I know, already), with swimming still not an option, so I'm going to drop my swimming goal down to 150 miles and up my cycling goal to 900 miles and my running goal up to 325 miles. Hopefully that will be enough to give me the extra cardio needed to make up for lost time in the pool.

Anyway, I managed just over a mile in the pool today, my last swim for a while....

Total distance: 1,850 yards

100 MILES! Happy Halloween!

Today I hit my yearly swim goal. I started swimming in late April and set a goal to swim 100 miles by the end of the year. It's kind of cool that I did it on the last day of the month and on Halloween no less. Now I need to see how much I can surpass my goal by in the final two months of the year. I'm gonna shoot for 30 more miles.


Me in the pool today. I was exhausted and truly felt like a zombie.

Anyway, today Jen went with me to the gym again and I pushed myself fairly hard. First I ran a 5k on the treadmill, while cranking up the incline for the last mile. Then I jumped straight on the bike and sprinted 4.5 miles as hard as I could. By the time I was done with that, I was pretty exhausted. I knew I needed to do at least 1.5 miles in the pool in order to hit the 100 mark, but I wasn't sure if I'd have enough energy. Fortunately, I did, but I truly felt like a zombie (pun absolutely intended) in the water. Afterward, I was wrecked. A little bit of barbecue with Jen after the gym pepped me right up, though. Here's todays' totals.
Warm up
200 free
Core
2,400 free
Cool down
100 breast

I was running out of time and had to really gut through the last 400 yards or so in order to get the yardage I needed to hit my yearly goal, but I finished just as lap swim ended. Great way to finish the month!

Total distance: 1.53 miles

Wake-up call

Yesterday, I received a pleasant surprise in the mail. I opened up the envelope and it was a new swim cap from U.S. Masters Swimming. As a U.S. Masters member you get free stuff in the mail for reaching certain milestones in the pool.

The cap was an award for swimming 50 miles, a milestone I reached on August 8.

Anyway, today my plan was to work on my starts. I haven't done them since I was in high school and boy, I forgot how hard those suckers are to master. Anita probably helped me work on them for about 30 minutes before I did a few sprint sets, so I didn't pile up very many yards in the pool today.

However, because I didn't get too many yards done in the pool, I went straight upstairs and knocked out six miles on the stationary bike before running two miles on the treadmill. Overall, I feel like I got a solid, although not great cardio workout today. My technique on the starts and my times on the sprints weren't encouraging, though, so I know there is still a ton of work to be done.

Today was quite a wake-up call.

Total distance: 0.6 miles