Jun 6, 2007

pool running ... who knew?

a month of little running and much trying to recover has come & gone ... i have been instructed to give it two more weeks of light, slow mileage. coach says we have plenty of time & he wants me to go till July on this light, slow mileage plan to ensure that i am fully healed and not dealing with any sort of pain once the really hard work of this marathon training begins.


so - the newest addition to my schedule is deep water pool running. 1 1/2 hours of pool running a week. 1 hour one day. 30 minutes another day.

i tested this out earlier in the week ... told the kids to play on the steps at the pool, swallowed my pride, because i was sure to look like a total dork with my just my head out of the water as i s-l-o-w-l-y made my way across - and plopped my bikini clad* self in a lane to give it a try before i had to do my official hour the next day. *note: not good pool running attire. any kid underwater with a pair of goggles on likely got an eyeful. not that there's much to eye. but still.

lets just say that the "testing of the waters" so to speak was less than stellar. my mantra? "he's insane, he's insane" ... referring to my coach - i thought he was out of his mind to think i was going to do it for an hour. i did it for 15 minutes & got out.

and of course - when i got home, i googled pool running. apparently, every minute of pool running equals a minute of regular road running. i smugly thought - yeah, right.

the next morning, i'm up at the butt crack of dawn to get a lane at the pool (also the added bonus here being that no one would really see my crazy self) ... i had secured myself a buddy to keep me company ... a runner friend who is 7 months pregnant & has put off running for the last trimester ... so there we are in the pool, running. we don't really know what we are doing - it takes a few laps to get some sort of rhythm ... and it is SLOW going ... but my heartrate is up. i didn't really know what to do with legs ... you are supposed to do exactly what you do on land ... but this is easier said than actually done. in hindsight - i think i wound up doing more of a scissor kick / cross country skiing thing.

whatever i was doing - i had absolutley no intention of sticking it out for the whole hour. (which is unusual for me - i follow my schedule to the millisecond of a mile. i do everything it says.)

but then, just as in running, when you say to yourself - i'll just do one more mile, or run to that tree, telephone pole, run for 5 more minutes ... i say, i'll just do one more lap, 5 more minutes - we'll tell another story ... then lo & behold, the hour is over ... we're done!

and because i still do not respect the pool running, i think its' a bit of a crock -- i just shower & go home to start my day. no stretching. nothing. as the day wore on - i felt the run. i felt like i ran 7 miles. only - my back didn't hurt. nothing hurt. it was just the nice, tired soreness of a run. a real run. only i did it in the pool. sheesh. who knew?

1 comment:

Vickie said...

I spent one whole summer pool running. At first, it didn't seem like anything was happening, but my legs (front of the shins actually) were so sore! You want to sort of pedal and push back with your feet, like a stroke I guess. Hard to explain. While it keeps up a semblance of fitness, because it is non-weight bearing there is a degree of weight gain I experienced. But maybe it was just overeating! Who knows! But when I actually went back to running, it seemed to transfer over okay. I suppose because you actually gave your body a break. I had one of those water belts, but you can get the same effect with a noodle.