The Life Of Ryan» swimming pool

Marathon Training – Day 45

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:14:50 +0000

I officially need to take a day off from training (and everything else for that matter) at this stage. I went for a swim today in the Trinity College Swimming Pool.

I could only muster 20 lengths before I lost the will to live and gave up. As usual, 20 is still better than nothing, so I should stil be relatively positive, but since I’m falling asleep a I type here, I have to assume that I’m pretty much done physically!

Going to try and go to bed for a few hours, then maybe do some more training later

Marathon Training – Day 25

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:03:54 +0000

Dosed up to my eyeballs on Rubex for Vitamin C and all sorts of other goood shit to try and shift this bloody cold, and (said he looking for sympathy) having had a rubbish night sleep in the spare room because I couldn’t stop coughing, I headed to the squash courts for a run-around this afternoon. I spent 45 minutes chasing around after my own shots and got a good cardio workout in the process. I have to say, I did a few court-lenght (as in, not very long) sprints while I was in there and I wasn’t able for it at all.

It’s bizarre that you might be able to cycle 7km then do 20 minutes on a cross trainer with relative easy, to the point where you don’t think you’re dying, but if you sprint the lenght of a squash court 5 times in quick succession, it feels like you might, in all truth, keel over and die!!

Thankfully, I didn’t keel over and die. In fact I summoned up the fortitude to go the swimming pool afterwards and turn in a few lengths. To be fair, probably only about 15, at which point I thought my breast stroking arms were about to fall off, but heck, it all counts!!

That’s well over an hour of good solid continuous exercise, which is good enough for me! Bring on Day 26…

The Cold Buster

Marathon Training – Day 2

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:58:26 +0000

Well, improving on yesterday’s fairly shambolic offering, I have actually done some exercise today. Now, I know I’m not training for a triathalon, so techincally there’s no reason for me to be swimming as part of my training, but nonetheless, that’s what I did.

My logic (yes there is some there) is that the marathon is a year away at this stage, so for the next few months, I’m just going to concentrate on general fitness and achieving some level of same, without necessarily concentrating on distance (or in fact any) running. Before I hit the tarmac, I need to strengthen my ankles and knees, because they are prone to injury and basically cripple me every time I do any sustained trainig.

In the meantime, I’m relying on swimming, squash and badminton to get my base level of fitness up to some sort of acceptable stanard….

That being said, how fooking long is a real swimming pool?? Like most of you, I’m used to swimming in gym size pools, which are rarely 25 meters. Most are somewhere between 17-21, and those extra 4-5 meters are actually A LOT when you’re back swimming lengths of a pool for the first time in years. A LOT I say. I don’t fully get the layout of the Trinity College swimming pool though, it took a fair few minutes of suspiciuos looking wandering around to find out where I was supposed to change and how to get there without seeing anything I shouldn’t be seeing. In the end, all I saw was naked men, which I guess is a result, albeit a bit of a disappointing one.

Wont lie to you, I’d say I only did about 15 lengths, maybe 20 at a push, and they were done 4 or 5 at a time. Breathless, yes I certainly was. Unfit, absolument. A LONG way to go to run 26.2 miles, certainly. Cautiously optimistic, yes. Going to have a mini Dairy Milk to celebrate my work today, indeed.

Day 3 tomorrow, and I’ve a badminton court booked and ready for action….but no parter at the moment, which could potentially be a problem.

I'll be in there somewhere