Day 9 - Personal Training begins
Today was my first session with Emily, the personal trainer at my work gym. I'm really fortunate to have her services available at very reasonable cost. Sessions are $20 for 30mins but my employer refunds half of this back (up to a limit) so it works out at $10 per session. Emily kicks my butt and I ache for two days afterwards. Today was back, shoulders and arms mostly. I'll be training with her mostly on Tuesdays and Fridays and this is most of the strength/sculpting training that I do. If time allows I get my running done before the work out sessions.Day 10 - Improving my swimming
One thing that's been bothering me is a lack of improvement in my swimming. Throughout last year and this, I've struggled to be able to swim for much distance using freestyle and had to revert to breaststroke for a distance to recover. Even at my fittest last year, going off too hard during my third race resulted in reverting to breaststroke after only a few laps of the pool and a resulting disappointing swim time.
I've considered my weakness to be an inefficient stroke. While I was a competitive swimmer as a child my stroke of choice was always backstroke so I never received a lot of training in freestyle/front crawl for longer events. Sure, I could sprint a couple of laps fast enough but clearly that stroke doesn't translate well.
Finally yesterday I took another look at You Tube videos demonstrating "Total Immersion" freestyle. Search for that or 'effortless freestyle' and you will find plenty of videos demonstrating the easy, relaxed stroke. I had tried it before but clearly hadn't 'got it'.
I tried again while swim training. And finally got an 'ah-ha!' moment. It appears as though I have been 'pulling' with my front hand too early, so my other hand wasn't entering the water to thrust forward until my pull was already half way through. I was still thrusting a hand forward while my pull had mostly finished and clearly this was generating 'negative thrust' in part of the stroke.
In the 'Total Immersion' videos there is a clear demonstration that the front hand is still outstretched fully after the other hand has already entered the water. So the pull starts with one hand while the thrust forward has already begun with the other. Ah! As soon as I consciously changed my stroke timing to do this my effort level dropped. Six laps straight off all freestyle and no breaststroke, and I finished without being out of breath. Six more after 45 sec rest, and then again. 18 lengths of freestyle without having to resort to any breaststroke.
I'm not saying I have it perfected yet. But suddenly the swim doesn't seem so daunting. I will definitely be watching plenty more videos on You Tube on this technique.
Day 11 - First Day of Dukan Cruise Phase
Weigh-in: 224.2lbs
Today I commence the Cruise phase of the Dukan diet, which means as much of the recommended list of vegetables are added to my diet every other day. My 10-day Attack phase delivered 8.8lbs of weight loss - a fantastic start and 23.8% of my targeted weight loss. As I expected, this leaves me a target of 2lbs per week weight loss to reach my targeted race weight of 196lbs.
I'm due for cycling training today (60 mins) but I'm also doing a road ride on Saturday so I'll probably cut today's session shorter and finish off the second 30 minutes of the Sufferfest video that I purchased earlier in the week.