Ouch.  Getting old is tough.  I’m actually really not that old… 30 to be exact.  But this has definitely been a challenge.

I used to be very active as a kid, but somewhere along the line (around 15 years old) I fell off that path.  And even though I’ve managed to remain relatively fit, my long, lost “fit”ness has definitely become something that I continue to seek.

This has been a week of ups and downs.  I started the week very strong.  I went from about 10 laps to 24 laps within one pool training session.  The next day I hit 9 straight laps without stopping (beating my personal record of 5 straight laps from the day before) and finished off with 30 laps!  Awesome! Right?  That’s a 200% increase in performance in 2 days.  I felt unstoppable and knew that I would ace the swim by June 27.

I then got tired.  Very tired.  The body is a strange thing.  I took one day off and went back to the gym, envisioning another record-breaking day.  Instead, I struggled to barely make 18 laps.  Wow, I was exhausted.  Nonetheless, I packed up and figured I was just having an off day.

I went back the next day.  I hit the pool first and barely made 9 laps!  What was happening.  Cmpletely exhausted from drowning in the pool, I gave up and did 6 miles on the stationary bike.  Another really tough day.

I figured that I needed more rest and took 2 days off from training.  I resumed tonight and had a better day in the pool, but it was a tremendous struggle - 27 laps in 25 minutes, lots of resting….

So how can I go from a 2 mile run and then 30 laps in the pool and still have energy left to just 9 laps in the pool?  I have no idea.  If anyone is reading this :-) and has any advice, please send it my way.  I’m definitely starting to lose a little bit of confidence.

T-minus 30 days and counting:

Thurs: 2 mile run-17 minutes; 24 laps-30 minutes

Fri: 30 laps-25 minutes

Sun: 18 laps-25 minutes

Mon: 9 laps-15 minutes; 6 mile bike:20 minutes

Getting old sucks.

So I downoaded a couple free training apps for my iPhone and tried them out on my first 2 days of Preliminary training.  I wanted to find a way to easily track and post my training online so that potential donators can follow my progress.  So far, I haven’t been too pleased with the results, but I’m sure I’ll find an easy solution.

RunKeeper - Easy app to use.  Just press start and start running.  After my run the app did not seem to work to well with the gps on my phone, mapping my route through blocks of houses in my neighbor hood.  I liked how it sent the session to a website, but it was too inaccurate to use.

MapMyRide - I downloaded mapmyrun and ten realized I already had MapMyRide on my phone.  It has support for biking, running, walking, and other, which is pretty cool.  It also send my sessions to a website, which gave me the option to “post to my blog”.  This gave a button or a iFramed map.  The map didn’t post and I’m not sure how to add a button to my blog yet.  The site is pretty confusing to use and it also gave me an inaccurate training route map reading, but there are some nice options for this site/app like finding training challenges (run 100 miles in 1 month), finding new routes, and logging training details like distance, rate, time of day, and map.

Ultimately, I’m not sure if I can rely on the iPhone’s GPS system to track training at this point. See Below: