Learning a lot...

I had my first swim since cramping my calf in Lake Placid last Saturday.

In the past 6 weeks, the only training that has suffered is my swimming. I'm doing the running and biking mileage, I'm just avoiding the pool. Swimming is what I like to do least. You could ask me to swim for 1 hour or run for 2 hours or bike for 3 hours and I'll take the run or bike.

The only time I REALLY enjoy swimming is if I'm hungover. There's something about your brain being mush and time flying in the pool. The only problem I have swimming after a night of drinking is my calf's tend to cramp from dehydration. Oh, and the probably of drowning is greater, but that's secondary.

Today I had two challenges. The first was whether my calf would cramp or not, and the second was mentally accepting my loss of speed. I find that if I don't swim regularly I lose it.

I definitely lost swimming speed, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Two weeks ago in the pool I was swimming 1:50 per 100 meters. Six months ago my lowest 100 ever was 1:28 and my overall average back then was probably 1:40 - 1:45 per 100.

After today's warm up, I did 6 x 50 meters and was averaging 44 seconds each. Then I did my first 300 and finished in 5:00 or 1:40 per 100. Then it went downhill. I had 5 more sets of 300 meters on 40 second rests and each set got slower. My final set was 5:28 or 1:49.6 per 100.

Like most swims, I wanted to quit after about 40 minutes but I wasn't going to let it beat me and "sucked it up". There is no greater feeling than finishing a swim session when you don't want to.

My calf was fine until the end. I was pushing off the wall and it started to have a very, very, slight cramp. I was driving home and my calf was "twitching" like crazy with all the "electrons" firing. It a freaky cool thing to see the muscles involuntary moving. It reminds me of those "electric pads" that therapists use to contract the muscles, except it's the body's natural electricity.

I got a good laugh today. If you look on the side of my blog you'll see the addition of a "Top Health Blogger" badge. I applied for it as a joke. Before they endorse your site they have to review and approve it's content.

Based on that requirement alone, I didn't think I had a chance of becoming accepted and was anticipating my rejection letter. I was looking forward to judging it against the others. Today they emailed me my acceptance. I wonder if they just looked at the photo's on the side and didn't read one word?

That's my cynical side. Then I realized, "I could be wrong". Maybe they scrutinized much of the content and felt I was onto something with my controversial training lifestyle. Perhaps they understood that text books are meant to be rewritten and we need to tell the world that excessive beer drinking goes well with excessive training.

It got me thinking that I should write a book. It would include chapters like, "4 am is too early to go to bed" and "If your drinking less than 12 beers you should have a nipple on that bottle". My personal favourite chapter is "Training with a hangover makes bonking in a race feel like nothing".

I think there is a whole group of future P.F.G.s (Previous Fat Guys) who would find it motivating. It is unique enough that it could be marketed differently. I'd propose that I make a deal with Coors or Amstel and include a copy of my book in every case of beer as a giveaway. It would show a whole new generation of P.F.G's that exercise doesn't have to be "sobering".

I'm just honoured that an organization with credibility has recognized my efforts and exploration of alternative training lifestyles. It almost brought a tear to my eye to be among all those "high brow blogs". (Read the next three sentences in Oscar acceptance speech tone). I finally feel accepted. I feel like I belong. And last but not least, I want to thank my family for taking care of me when I'm playing the porcelain tuba.

Talking about P.F.G's, I got the colour logo completed and now all the P.F.G. Triathlon Club merchandise is in full color. You can purchase it at http://www.cafepress.ca/pfgtriclub . I also updated the P.F.G Blog. If anyone is, or knows a P.F.G., have them email me their story and pictures and I'll post it. The more stories the more inspiration.

One last thing, last week I got an email from Google. They very nicely "bitch slapped" me for asking for clicks and said if I don't get all my requests off the blog within 72 hours they were going to infiltrate the grid and remove all the money from my bank account and shut down my homes electricity and gas.

Well, maybe they didn't word it exactly like that, although I'm sure they could do it if they wanted to. What they did say was that they would shut down my ability to have my blog readers "throw a coin in my open guitar case".

So you won't find me begging for Cs ever again, I won't even use the word, it won't happen, it's not right to beg for Cs, and I won't do it, definitely won't beg for C's ever again, nope, not again, don't want to sway people towards doing anything against the rules and Cing for the sake of Cing, I don't want to have my privileges shut down because of inappropriate requests.

I just wanted to let everyone know that they should only C if they find something that interests them. If you've been reading my blog for any period of time you know that I definitely don't like breaking the rules. I'm basically the type of guy that likes to color between the lines. I'm an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy. And that has nothing to do with time of day. Wink, wink.

On another subject, I wanted to talk about pacing....if you are going to do something regularly, like helping a friend or TPPF, don't do it excessively. It's always good to do things in a measured fashion. To much of a good thing isn't good. It's like training, if you go to hard and do it all at once, you burnout. The tortoise wins the race, if you know what I mean. If not, you're an idiot.

Oh, and I'm back down to 183 lbs.

Long Swim - 1:05:06 / 3000 meters