Shirlene's posterous

X_X 魔鬼教练 strikes again

I can still feel the effects of yesterday evening's swim session...  Damn.

I've never swum so much ever, 2.6km training, excluding drills!  For the 300m, I was half a lap behind the next last guy, my arms and lungs were screaming for mercy at the last 100m of each rep.

Lanes 3 and 4 are in a league of their own... fastest lap of 46s during the 5x100 (fast/slow) despite a prior 1.8km swim? O_o

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.  Thursday class might become addictive... Although scheduling an interval session today might have been a mistake.

Coach, are you going easy next Thursday???

6x50==EZ pull,2-4-6-4-2/1, etc.
Lane 2---5x300,200, 5x100 (fast/slow), 4x100(fast, breast/free)

get to know my 魔鬼教练 better on http://yellowfish-training.blogspot.com/

T-6 mid-week update

So the week in training has gone pretty well, albeit moved up somewhat.

Monday became a rest day, so my short run was moved to Tuesday morning, and Tuesday's swim became a short swim + interval bike workout yesterday. 

A big part of my motivation this week is that the boy's had more time out of work, and has done some pretty intense work-out/run/swim training.  He loves recounting in haggard tones to our friends how I signed him up for the triathlon ("I think she's trying to tell me something"), but I don't think I'm the only one enjoying our training and trash talking.  Yes, that's right, this has become (pseudo-) competitive: we're gunning for the title of "the sexier one".

This week, the boy might just be edging me out in terms of sexiness -- my work-outs haven't been quite as intense -- and the good-humoured jibes about who would win in a friend-adjudicated swimsuit competition are definitely out in force.  Watch out E, I've still got workouts planned for tonight and tomorrow, your lead this week is nowhere near "insurmountable", and I'm cuter to begin with anyway.

M: rest
T: easy run ~4km in 30 min
W: easy swim 20 min (~12 laps), interval ride 30 min (10km), cool down run 5 min

T-6 weeks to Tri: planning ahead

One week after my duathlon (and after a bit of a lull), it's full steam ahead with my training.  And not a minute too soon, too, what with the 2nd of May just 6 weeks away!

This week:
M (today) - run, short 3 mis.
Tu - swim class? hmmm... an appointment clashes, so we'll see.
W - Bike, short half-hour round the house.
Th - run, intervals.
F - Short swim, perhaps? Definitely a must if I miss Tu's class.
Sa - Potentially long bike ride (that's 40km for beginner me), and waking up at 5am. Meep!
Su - Long run (9-10km?)

Very ambitious... if I can get 5 out of 7 workouts in there, it'll be a good week.

Coming soon: Aquathlon and Duathlon review, and plans leading to the Tri.

The Women’s Crusade

via nytimes.com

"... After Luck and her entourage disappeared, Tererai began to study on her own, in hiding from her husband, while raising her five children. Painstakingly, with the help of friends, she wrote down her goals on a piece of paper: “One day I will go to the United States of America,” she began, for Goal 1. She added that she would earn a college degree, a master’s degree and a Ph.D. — all exquisitely absurd dreams for a married cattle herder in Zimbabwe who had less than one year’s formal education. But Tererai took the piece of paper and folded it inside three layers of plastic to protect it, and then placed it in an old can. She buried the can under a rock where she herded cattle."

You need to hear how this story ends.

temporary home for fb favorite quotes

“What is real?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside and a stick-out handle?’

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once like being wound up?” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints, and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” ~Ailin's blog.

"Go. Do. Be." ~teva

"Never stop exploring." ~the north face

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." ~Madeleine L'Engle

"What marries me to you? Is it a piece of paper? Then I am not married to you. Is it Church approval? Then I am not married to you. Is it the fact of a roof, the fact of a bed, the fact of two keys in one lock? Then I am not married to you. Is it the Eye of the Law? Then I am not married to you.

If it is the daily pleasure in your face. If it is the quickening of my spirits at your face, if it is your face I seek when I seek no other, if it is the love of you that is consent, if it is consent to be of the same mind, then let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..."
~Art & Lies, Jeanette Winterson, from Char Lim fav quotes

"Oh... So I see you like erm... milk..." ~Eugene, demonstrating a possible pickup line to be used at the neighbourhood supermarket.

"Anima Sana In Corpore Sano" ~asics

"And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching."
~Little Gidding III, T.S. Eliot