Just Keep Swimming

Today's been a chlorine-based day. First I hung out at the pool in my apartment complex to work on my tan. Then, I went and swam half a mile at the gym.  I need to figure out something to do mentally while I swim; counting strokes, breaths, and yards will get old soon.

As an aside, I have to walk into the rec; if I go in on crutches, I can't swim. Safety and all.  This doesn't bother me too much; I spend the majority of the day on crutches and the distance from car to pool isn't great. Today I noticed that as I was doing flip turns, I was pushing off with my right foot.  No pain at all then, but my shin was definitely tingling in the area of at least one of the fractures as I walked to the car.

Hopefully this is my last week on crutches!

Gone Swimming!

I went for my first swim yesterday! It went well, especially considering that I hung up my Speedo in 2007. Since it's been a while since my last swim-based workout, I looked at my notes from those workouts (I really don't know why I keep these things) and decided that maybe I wasn't quite up to 70 laps of the pool.

A quick Internet search provided a solution: 100 Swimming Workouts. One deep breath, reality check ("Amanda, you're not ready to jump back in at an advanced level"), and click later - a workout! I scribbled it onto my hand in Sharpie for reference in the pool.

Another quick Internet search later revealed that to equate one mile running, I'd only have to swim 1/3 of a mile. If swimming wasn't already my choice of recovery cardio, it would have been after learning that tidbit! The first beginning swimming workout was 600 yards, exactly 1/3 of a mile.

I forgot the band portion of my heart rate monitor in the car, so I didn't track my heart rate for the swim. However, it felt like it does when I was doing interval training; therefore, I'm only going to assume good things!

Swimming Workout Day 1: (My comments)
2x50 freestyle warmup
4x25 freestyle - count the strokes (22 strokes/lap)
4x50 freestyle - :30 rest between
4x25 freestyle - count the strokes (22 strokes/lap)
2x50 freestyle cooldown

Temporarily Derailed!

The initial post for this blog should be awesome and related to how awesome I'm doing with the training and sticking to it.

But it's not.

I was doing awesome, sticking to the training, eating better, etc... for a pretty decent amount of time. I'd gotten myself to a consistent 13 minute/mile pace and was considering increasing my distance marginally. However, this plan was derailed by my orthopedist, Dr. R.

About six weeks ago, I started to have very sharp pains in my right leg after running. My usual post-running routine (wrap, ice, elevate) wasn't working to alleviate the pain.  My right ankle was swelling at random intervals. There were days at work that I didn't want to drink anything because I dreaded having to go to the bathroom.  I took two weeks off of running, thinking that it was just shin splints gone wrong.  After the two weeks, I was mostly back to normal (i.e., the pain level was tolerable) and I decided to go for an easy run.

Bad. Idea.

The next day, I could barely walk. I set up an appointment with my PCP who promptly referred me to my new orthopedist, Dr. R.  After x-rays and a very painful exam I was duly informed that I have at least one but potentially three stress fractures.  Two are located on my tibia and there is a third one potentially near my ankle (which would explain the random swelling).

Dr. R informed me that I'm off of running for three months until my leg heals and even then, I will have to gradually build back up to where I was.  In the mean time, I'm taking up swimming as that, and cycling, are really my only two options now.  And I'm on crutches. :(