Izulde
09-23-2012, 02:23 AM
There's something about being single, male, and turning 30 that's devastating, particularly when one has a lengthy track record of dating younger (that said, there *was* this one woman who was 15 years older, when I was 22, but she was most assuredly the outlier.) It gets even worse every year after that. 33 now, and damned if I don't even want to *think* about 35, much less 40, in this condition.
My body, formerly pretty well toned and athletic back in high school, has, over the years, acquired fuckloads of fat and flabbiness. I was 150 back then; I've gone north of 200 far too many times since. That's a hell of a lot of difference. I'm about 190 last time I checked, and that's after losing around 17 pounds in Japan over the summer.
So obviously, some shit has to change. Lot of factors went into my tubbiness, but one of the biggest is lack of exercise.
Long story short: I played several sports in high school (football, soccer, swimming, track, tennis). Only one I ever varsity lettered in was swimming, although tennis was my favorite, and still my secret love. Since then, I've had a couple of club sport stints in fencing at schools (Minnesota, Wyoming), and an on-again, off-again relationship with kyukido, which combines taekwando, jujitsu, and judo.
I do walk a lot, but that's nowhere near enough to keep back the creep.
So then I'm watching the first two episodes of Season 4 of Glee the other night, and I see how damn hot Brody is and how I'm, well, not. It made me think of the time freshman year in high school that my sister's hot, older female friend saw me at a track meet and said, "Wow, Izulde's getting a serious bod."
I got said fine ass form from swimming, and to be honest, it was true. I've never looked as good physique-wise as I did when I was swimming (Too bad my face in high school was so ugly, it used to curdle the milk in the bags.)
Thus, on a complete whim, I've decided to start swimming again, and maybe make some other lifestyle changes (fuck, I hate that buzzphrase).
Oh, and the other reason I went with swimming: I despise lifting weights and hate running even more, despite two years of high school track and three years of track and cross country in middle school. To this day, I still don't know why I spent so many years running when I could have done more sports that I actually, you know, enjoyed?
Anyway, today was my first day trying to do an actual swimming workout since I was 17. Yeah. 16 years since then, which is super depressing because I'm like, these freshmen I teach were like 2 and 3 years old the last time I swam a workout and now they're in college.
I was very conscious of the long, long gap, and I knew not to even think about doing the 3500-4000 meter sets I used to do 6 times a week in high school (Saturday mornings, too).
So, much to my chagrin, I found myself googling beginning swimmer workouts and found a page that has... 500 meter sets listed. "Okay," I told myself, "I know this is totally a yardage total you practically used to do just as your freaking warmup in high school, but, hello? 16 years?"
And so I wrote down the following workout to use today:
Warmup
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)
Ladder Set
25/50/75/75/50/25 (30 second intervals)
Cooldown
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)
By 30 second intervals, I mean after each one, I would take a 30 second rest. So say for example I did the first 25 of the ladder set, I would wait 30 seconds before doing the 50, then wait 30 seconds before doing the first 75, etc.
I decided to stick just to freestyle for the first week or two. This was about me just getting back to the swimming swing of things.
How It Went
The Warmup
This is what happens when it's been so long. Your mind and body automatically revert back to its last known position, which in my case was being able to maintain a pretty decent clip for a 50 and only needing to take one, maybe two breaths at most.
It's one thing to do that at 17 when you've been swimming competitively for 3-4 years. It's another thing entirely to do it when you're 33 and out of shape. Needless to say, I went at the warm-ups too hard and with too many strokes between breaths. I was a little winded after the warmups, but didn't think I'd have any problems the rest of the way.
The Ladder
First 25? No problem. First 50, I started getting a little dizzy. Then, the first length of the first 75, for whatever reason, I got -really- dizzy, cramped up, and was about to black out. So I stopped after that first 25 and spent a full minute, just catching my breath, feeling like a damned old fool and glad there were no hot girls around to see this Blobasaurus wheezing.
That was the first interval I failed. But I resolved to press on anyway and completed the second 75. Was gasping at the end of that one and needed to do a 40 second interval, but from there, completing the second 50 and the last 25 were a comparative breeze.
The Cooldown
At this point, my legs and shoulders were starting to ache with the effort of the ladder, so I just took it slow and made my 30 second intervals. Got out, went and spent a couple of minutes in the whirlpool, and then left.
Overall Synopsis
Intervals made: 12
Intervals failed: 2
Target meterage: 500
Made meterage: 450
Failed meterage: 50
Not the best start, to be honest. But not the worst, either, especially since I committed a cardinal sin: I swam without goggles, because I forgot to pick some up. That'll change for tomorrow of course.
Other notes: As I said, all freestyle. No flip turns, either. Nor was I shooting for any times other than making the rest intervals. This is about me getting very slowly back into things, so I don't burn myself out.
Technically you're supposed to go 3x a week when you're starting out and build up that way, but I'm going to try and do 5x a week, skipping Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are my busiest days.
Since I'm going to the university's rec center for this, I also have to plan my schedule carefully. When I went around 5:00 or 6:00 tonight, it was fine. There was only one open lane, but that was all I needed. Weekdays are going to be much trickier - the pool closes at 5:30 on M-Th for a class. It's also closed until 11:30 am on Saturday because of another class. Obviously this isn't going to be all semester, but it's something to be aware of.
I've heard the best times to go are from 12-3 during the week, so we'll try that and see.
But first order of business is to get goggles. I'll do that tomorrow before I go in for the workout. Not sure if I'll use the same one, or if I'll try a form workout. We'll see.
My body, formerly pretty well toned and athletic back in high school, has, over the years, acquired fuckloads of fat and flabbiness. I was 150 back then; I've gone north of 200 far too many times since. That's a hell of a lot of difference. I'm about 190 last time I checked, and that's after losing around 17 pounds in Japan over the summer.
So obviously, some shit has to change. Lot of factors went into my tubbiness, but one of the biggest is lack of exercise.
Long story short: I played several sports in high school (football, soccer, swimming, track, tennis). Only one I ever varsity lettered in was swimming, although tennis was my favorite, and still my secret love. Since then, I've had a couple of club sport stints in fencing at schools (Minnesota, Wyoming), and an on-again, off-again relationship with kyukido, which combines taekwando, jujitsu, and judo.
I do walk a lot, but that's nowhere near enough to keep back the creep.
So then I'm watching the first two episodes of Season 4 of Glee the other night, and I see how damn hot Brody is and how I'm, well, not. It made me think of the time freshman year in high school that my sister's hot, older female friend saw me at a track meet and said, "Wow, Izulde's getting a serious bod."
I got said fine ass form from swimming, and to be honest, it was true. I've never looked as good physique-wise as I did when I was swimming (Too bad my face in high school was so ugly, it used to curdle the milk in the bags.)
Thus, on a complete whim, I've decided to start swimming again, and maybe make some other lifestyle changes (fuck, I hate that buzzphrase).
Oh, and the other reason I went with swimming: I despise lifting weights and hate running even more, despite two years of high school track and three years of track and cross country in middle school. To this day, I still don't know why I spent so many years running when I could have done more sports that I actually, you know, enjoyed?
Anyway, today was my first day trying to do an actual swimming workout since I was 17. Yeah. 16 years since then, which is super depressing because I'm like, these freshmen I teach were like 2 and 3 years old the last time I swam a workout and now they're in college.
I was very conscious of the long, long gap, and I knew not to even think about doing the 3500-4000 meter sets I used to do 6 times a week in high school (Saturday mornings, too).
So, much to my chagrin, I found myself googling beginning swimmer workouts and found a page that has... 500 meter sets listed. "Okay," I told myself, "I know this is totally a yardage total you practically used to do just as your freaking warmup in high school, but, hello? 16 years?"
And so I wrote down the following workout to use today:
Warmup
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)
Ladder Set
25/50/75/75/50/25 (30 second intervals)
Cooldown
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)
By 30 second intervals, I mean after each one, I would take a 30 second rest. So say for example I did the first 25 of the ladder set, I would wait 30 seconds before doing the 50, then wait 30 seconds before doing the first 75, etc.
I decided to stick just to freestyle for the first week or two. This was about me just getting back to the swimming swing of things.
How It Went
The Warmup
This is what happens when it's been so long. Your mind and body automatically revert back to its last known position, which in my case was being able to maintain a pretty decent clip for a 50 and only needing to take one, maybe two breaths at most.
It's one thing to do that at 17 when you've been swimming competitively for 3-4 years. It's another thing entirely to do it when you're 33 and out of shape. Needless to say, I went at the warm-ups too hard and with too many strokes between breaths. I was a little winded after the warmups, but didn't think I'd have any problems the rest of the way.
The Ladder
First 25? No problem. First 50, I started getting a little dizzy. Then, the first length of the first 75, for whatever reason, I got -really- dizzy, cramped up, and was about to black out. So I stopped after that first 25 and spent a full minute, just catching my breath, feeling like a damned old fool and glad there were no hot girls around to see this Blobasaurus wheezing.
That was the first interval I failed. But I resolved to press on anyway and completed the second 75. Was gasping at the end of that one and needed to do a 40 second interval, but from there, completing the second 50 and the last 25 were a comparative breeze.
The Cooldown
At this point, my legs and shoulders were starting to ache with the effort of the ladder, so I just took it slow and made my 30 second intervals. Got out, went and spent a couple of minutes in the whirlpool, and then left.
Overall Synopsis
Intervals made: 12
Intervals failed: 2
Target meterage: 500
Made meterage: 450
Failed meterage: 50
Not the best start, to be honest. But not the worst, either, especially since I committed a cardinal sin: I swam without goggles, because I forgot to pick some up. That'll change for tomorrow of course.
Other notes: As I said, all freestyle. No flip turns, either. Nor was I shooting for any times other than making the rest intervals. This is about me getting very slowly back into things, so I don't burn myself out.
Technically you're supposed to go 3x a week when you're starting out and build up that way, but I'm going to try and do 5x a week, skipping Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are my busiest days.
Since I'm going to the university's rec center for this, I also have to plan my schedule carefully. When I went around 5:00 or 6:00 tonight, it was fine. There was only one open lane, but that was all I needed. Weekdays are going to be much trickier - the pool closes at 5:30 on M-Th for a class. It's also closed until 11:30 am on Saturday because of another class. Obviously this isn't going to be all semester, but it's something to be aware of.
I've heard the best times to go are from 12-3 during the week, so we'll try that and see.
But first order of business is to get goggles. I'll do that tomorrow before I go in for the workout. Not sure if I'll use the same one, or if I'll try a form workout. We'll see.