Ice, ice baby....

Well, if you recall a few posts ago I told you I had reached the "when to say when point".....well today I had my massage therapy appointment and my therapist told me that he thinks I might have a touch of tendonitis or bursitis in my left shoulder (ole lefty has been the weaker shoulder since last fall when the black lab running club decided to chase a deer while on leashes...).  Luckily this is a recovery week and I could afford to take today as an additional day off.  I need to be more on top of doing my injury prevention exercises and now I need to add in a post swim icing regiment (which if you've never had to ice your shoulder before its a pain in the rear because its very hard to wrap your shoulder without assistance).  If it is a slight tendon issue, its not bad, as there isn't constant pain and there is no pain while swimming.  The only time my shoulder "catches" and there is slight pain is when I am doing an upward pull-like for example when pulling pants on...I suppose the solution is no pants right?  :)  Just kidding!

Anyway, my massage therapy appointment today was for 2 hours, so I am going to HURT tomorrow, but I am going to attempt to swim a light swim in the morning.  Good news from the appointment though is that my right hip-flexor which was causing me a little grief at the last visit is MUCH better now after the new stretches I was given.

Well, I've got to go make a birthday cake for my nephew who will be here this weekend!

Good night!

~Emily

Now Accepting Donations! : )

Okay everyone!  Let the fundraising begin!

I'd first like to make it clear that all money raised will go straight to Katelyn (well to her parents) to assist in her medical expenses.  I follow up on Katelyn's Caring Bridge website frequently and also follow Katelyn's mom Jaime's facebook page.  The bits and pieces I have read about the battles with the insurance company on what is and isn't covered by insurance just reinforces my opinion that the LAST thing this family should have to worry about is money.

There are a few options here for those who want to donate:

1) Donations may be mailed to:

A Lakke for Katelyn
c/o Emily von Jentzen
PO Box 10992
Kalispell, MT 59904

2) Donations may be made at any First Interstate Bank Location (or mailed to any First Interstate Bank)

Make sure your donation is clearly direct to Account Name: A Lake for Katelyn

3) Donate using the "donate" button on the side of this webpage.  Online donations will be routed through PayPal and deposited into the Benefit account at First Interstate Bank.

Lets get started and raise some money for Katelyn!

~Emily

When to say "when"

Aghhh!  Sorry, its been a few days!  But I promise-I’ve been busy!

Saturday I swam 4,000 yards in the afternoon which followed a three hour walk with Dixie while we waited for the shop to fix my car.

Sunday I was slated to get in a 12,000 yard swim, but I woke up so exhausted with achy shoulders and I decided a day off from swimming was required.  I’ve been pushing a little too hard I think and my body is telling me that.  The key to avoiding injury when you are training this much is all about knowing when to say "when."  I was kind of in a “funk” emotionally over the weekend and my experience is that points to imbalance in training or too much training. I decided that although I really want to be the kind of athlete that can handle a 3 weeks hard 1 week recovery schedule, I have come to the realization that much like last year, my body doesn’t do as well on that schedule.  So I will now resort back to a 2 week hard one week recovery schedule for the rest of my training.  I am now on a recovery week (without my 12,000 yard on Sunday, last week’s total was only 24,000 yards).

This morning I did get up and get in a 6,000 yard practice, but it was an easy 6,000.  I took today off of work which gave me an opportunity to check about a million things off of my to-do list.  I got the benefit account set up so I can start collecting donations (tomorrow’s post will have the details on that), I got my PO box for those who want to mail donations, I got my Lake Chelan maps laminated (and one hung on my wall!), I met with a nutritionist and I took Dixie-doodle to the vet for her check up.

My nutrition appointment was great.  I had been documenting my food intake for the past week so that Ashley could tell me how my caloric intake was and things I needed to improve on.  What I learned is that I am slightly under eating for the amount of activity I am trying to get out of my body.  My normal workout day (with only an am swim of 2 hours) should be at about 3300 calories.  I’m about 500 less than that at this point on average.  Ashley gave me a few things to add/change about what I am eating and when as well as some new high protein foods that I hadn’t even heard of which I am excited about trying.  I’m going to work on the things she suggested over the next month and meet with her again at the beginning of August to re-asses and also to formulate a plan as for nutrition during my swim.

So tomorrow its back to work.  I’ve got a light workout schedule for the rest of this week. My sister and my niece and nephew are going to be in town this weekend and then my niece will be staying with me here for 2 weeks!  She is a little fishy, so I am thinking she will make a great training buddy for that time period!

Okay, well I will have more details on how to donate to my fundraising efforts in tomorrow’s post!

Good night!

~Emily

More of the same

I don’t have a lot to write about tonight because I am EXHAUSTED!  I got up and swam before work, another 6,000 yards (that’s three 6,000 yard morning practices this week!).  Yesterday was a day off and I can tell my timing of my days off is improving as my workout this morning felt great.  One of my bench mark sets has been sets of 100s on the 1:30 (which used to be a cake walk in college, but even as recent as 3 months ago any more than 5 in a row was pretty difficult).  Today one of my sets was 8 x 100s on the 1:30 and I kept all 8 at 1:20’s! 

I only worked until noon today, which was nice to have the afternoon in the sunshine to attempt to finish up the yard work (which surely feels like an additional workout!).   The yard is ALMOST done (I will post pictures when its done, although without a “before” pic, I’m not sure one can really appreciate how much work it was!).  My sister, niece and nephew are coming next week and I want to have the yard look nice when they get here so they don't think I live in a jungle!

I coached for an hour this evening.  Then I went home and ate dinner and now I am going to read for a little bit before bed.

I have a busy agenda this weekend and a LONG to-do list…hopefully I will have some exciting things to report by Sunday!

Goodnight!

~Emily

Happy Halfway!

Alright!  Another beautiful day!  I hope we are done with the rain and the sunshine stays around until October!  : )  I'm so glad that we are halfway to the weekend! 

I made it to the pool this morning and got my 6000 yards in, it was rough during the middle though.  I forgot my watch at home so I was relying on the pace clock, but then ½ way through my main set of 6 x 500s someone MOVED the pace clock and I couldn’t see it!  Grrrrrrrrr.  I got through it though, it was just harder without the clock to know my times.  Afterwards my shoulders were SO tight.

Work wasn’t quite as hectic as Monday and Tuesday were, so that was a nice break.  Over lunch I called the Lake Chelan Mirror (the newspaper there) and asked them about covering my swim.  The lady I spoke to, Ruth, said she has lived there her whole life and she didn’t think anyone had swam the whole lake.  She was really nice and told me the editors would be in contact with me shortly! 

After work I embarked on day two of reclaiming my yard from weeds and tall grass!  Its hard work-I spent another two hours weed whacking today and I am maybe about ½ of the way done.  Slowly, but surely I will get it done…and I think I have learned my lesson about not letting it get out of control.

I had spaghetti for dinner.  I love spaghetti-its my favorite dinner I think.  So now I am going to watch a little Greys Anatomy before going to bed.

Goodnight!

~Em

Good Day Sunshine!

I had a really nice day today!  It was sunny and gorgeous out ALL day-I’ve been missing the sunshine big time!  I got my workout in before work (6,000 yards) and I don’t usually write out exactly what my workout was, but today’s I really liked, because it went by fast and I felt the variety was really good:

            300 swim 200 drill 300 swim 200 kick 300 swim

            3 x 100 @ 1:40

            4 x 200 IM

            5 x 300 free pull @ 5:00

            4 x 200

            3 x 100 @ 1:30

            800 pull

            200 easy (100 scull)

I also paid good attention to my technique today (yes, even I need to work on drills and technique from time to time).  As I mentioned, a friend of mine was able to video tape me the other day and I am working on correcting some bad habits I appear to have developed.

Today I also started writing down what I eat and I am going to see a nutritionist next week.  I think part of my low energy issue lately has been nutrition related.  I don’t think I have been eating enough (or good enough) for what I am expecting out of my body.  Yesterday on my workout day off, I had a body comp assessment done and my resting metabolic rate is 1663-which means if I were to lay in bed all day and essentially not do anything physical that is how many calories I would need for my body to function.  Obviously, then when you add activities like workouts your caloric needs increase.  So keeping a food journal for a week will assist in my meeting with the nutritionist to determine where I can make improvements in my fuel intake! 

I got a couple hours of yard work in once I got home from work and I had a good dinner and now I am ready to go to sleep! 

Goodnight!

~Emily

Twice the Speed of Life

Today I was going 90 miles an hour all day I swear!  Well-at least until 4 ish.  I got up at 6 and got in a great 4000 yard practice before heading to the Triathlon at Foys Lake (just to watch, not to race).  My morning practice I repeated my “test set” that I last did on June 1^st (max yardage in 1 hour).  Last time I was at 3700 yards in an hour and today I was at 3900 yards in an hour!  Improvement!  Now I am just 300 yards off my hour pace which is fantastic.

After my morning swim I rushed home, showered, changed packed up the dog and headed to the Lake to watch my athletes race at the triathlon. Bringing Dixie turned out to be a minor inconvenience as I may have ruined her forever in terms of her being a good “spectator dog”.  From the minute we got there she wanted to be in the water with all the swimmers in their wetsuits (as she has gotten WAY too used to swimming with me).  She whined and barked through the whole swim.  Then on the run she kept looking at me like “hey LAZY, the other runners are going to beat us if we don’t start running soon.”  She is used to running and swimming with me and didn’t enjoy at all sitting on the sidelines.

Everyone had a really good race…. although there were a few mishaps, like the athlete that put his running shoes on first and ended up doing the whole bike in his running shoes instead of his clip in bike pedals, but overall I think everyone had fairly good races despite the weather.

After the race, I rushed home again to drop Dixie off, eat a little bit and change BACK into my swim suit to meet a friend for a lunch time swim. Since I wanted to make my yardage goal of 30,000 for the week, I still (Even after this morning’s 4000 yard swim) needed 5,000 yards to hit that.  So that is what I did!  It wasn’t pretty, which I can say with a good deal of certainty since at the end of my swim I had my friend video tape my stroke and ughhhhh I have GOT to do some drill work because I have gotten a little sloppy.  Although I am hoping most of the bad technique captured on video today was more the result of me being tired.

After a quick meal after swimming I FINALLY got home and tried to take a little nap, but my entire body is throbbing and I was too sore to sleep.  I am planning on being lazy the rest of the evening, although Dixie apparently has different plans as she will not stop nudging me with her tennis ball.  Unfortunately the weather was not great for the dog park or anything like that….so Dixie may need a mid-week trip to the dog park to make up for not getting her usual weekend play time in.  

Anyway, I’m happy to report I surpassed my yardage goal this week with a total of 30,300 yards!

~Emily