Training Journal #8

I had my first Tuesday morning Masters this week. Being in the pool for 6am is rough. Its kinda nice to watch the whole Kiwanis centre go pinkish orange just after 7am, but the dark, cold, winter morning is not my favourite way to start the day. Also kick-sets. Christine likes kick-sets.

Mileage this week was only 14km, but I had 3 double workouts (water and dry-land work out in the same day).

Looking ahead a few weeks I have my first test-swim on April 6th where I'll swim 7km straight. Usually in a workout you don't just swim straight. It is better training to do intervals, so that's mostly what I do. But this week I decided to do a 3km straight swim for some peace of mind. I did it in 57 minutes with 2 feed breaks of 1.5min each where I drank half a water bottle of carbs/electrolytes.

I'm filling out the paper work to send in to the Great Lakes Crossing Organization who will sanction my swim. That means they'll have a representative along as part of my crew and make sure I follow all the rules and at the end they'll record my swim as an official crossing of Lake Erie. As part of this package I'm sending in I needed my doctor to sign off on it. I was actually pretty nervous for my appt with Dr. Taliano. It's a bizarre thing to have to walk into a person's office who doesn't really know you and tell them what you're planning to do and then ask them if they think you're capable. I wanted to drop to the ground and do 100 push ups so I might look stronger before I walked into his office. Not that I could do 100 push ups. He was pretty excited about the whole thing though so that was nice. He sent me for blood work and the results came in the other day. I have low iron. Like REALLY low iron. Which was pretty shocking to me and I'm still not quite sure I believe the results. I eat meat, I have spinach in my smoothie every morning, I'm not tired, and I'm not the stereotypical frail little girl who is prone to fainting. How could I possibly have low iron??? Well apparently I do, and Dr. T won't sign off on my paper work until I bring it up. Christine was pretty worried too actually. Normal iron levels are between 30-150, or even up to 300 for high performance athletes Christine says. My level is a 7. They are both surprised I'm functioning as well as I am. So now I'm that girl who has to take iron pills everyday. Who would've thought. Also- iron pills do not make your tummy happy. I'm told it gets better. It better get better.