Bike/Pool/Friend 1:15:39

Monday, May 21, 2007

I was hoping to get a pool run in with Jessalyn today but the Crystal pool wasn’t open at all and the Commonwealth closed at 4pm which was too soon for her to make it into town. Giuse was nice enough to come with me. We went up to the exercise room and did some stationary bike. I did a pre-set cardio program for 45 minutes but I manually moved the target heart rate up as the WO progressed. I started slowly getting my HR up to 140 after about 15 minutes. Then I increased the HR to 145 and held that for 10 minutes and then up once more to 150 for the final 20 minutes, with the RPM hovering at 100 the whole time keeping a good spin going without too much resistance. The effort felt very close to a moderate run around the lakes with a gradual pick up except I covered just over 16 miles instead of 6 and was sweating like a maniac! I’ll be drinking a ton of water tonight. Giuse in the meantime did his own WO on the bike but he said his legs felt stiff so he just did a lot of easy spinning. I finished off with a very fast and easy 5 minute spin with no resistance at all as a cool-down and then headed straight down to the pool. I pool ran for 25 minutes throwing in a short, hard effort with The Finn’s WO 10”-20”-30” etc, up to 60” then back down with 15” rests. I managed to make a little friend during this WO. A little kid who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old started talking to me and swimming beside me in the dive tank. “Watch this!” he would say over and over and he would jump off the side or swim under water holding his breath for a long time. The dive tank had no other kids in it, just me and a couple of putzers. He asked me if running under water made me a faster swimmer. I didn’t think he would really want to hear why I was doing it so I just said I hoped it would and I told him he should try the floatation belt which he did. My WO finished and as I was getting out of the pool he asked if I was trying to be an athlete. I laughed and said “Yep, trying!”. He then asked if I would dive off the edge with him…we could have a contest! I apologized and said I had to go but that I enjoyed swimming with him. I felt so badly just leaving him there on his own but Joey was waiting and I wanted to beat the mad rush with the pool closing in just 10 minutes. I slowly limped my way back towards the change rooms forcing myself not to look back. Just as I got to the exit, he came up from behind and said he had a knock-knock joke for me so I said I wanted to hear it. It was a good one and I told him so. I was a bit afraid he was going to follow me right into the women’s change room! I felt so sad for him. It seemed like he was all alone and just wanted a friend. Joey said with my height and physique he probably thought I was his age…thanks there Giuse. After I changed and came out I asked Giuse if he had seen him leave and Joey said no. I waited around a bit to see if his parents were around but he didn’t come out so we left. As we were driving along Elk Dr., we saw him walking all alone carrying a plastic bag with his swimming stuff in it. I felt so sad…the poor little guy went to the pool all by himself and had no one to play with! I rolled down my window as we drove by. He looked up and I stuck my head out and waved at him. He shot me a big smile once he recognized me and waved back and then kept walking with his head down. I wanted to give him a hug…poor kid.

Foot update: No big changes...still bloody hurts to bear all my weight on it while toeing off. Oh! I bumped into MC this morning while he was going for a run and he said he could fit me in for another treatment on my foot with acupuncture etc this week since he got a cancellation...yay! He still thinks it's not a stressie and so does Matty. MC thinks my metatarsal has dropped and I will be back running in a week or two, tops. I still want to see the bone scan results before I start running again.

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