Sharla's Log

[Sharla]

I did manage the swim

One hour, moderate intensity. Worked on freestyle catch up for 25 m up the pool and backstroke back wearing fins. Freestyle catch up is something my soon to be ex flatmate Sarah showed me (she used to be a competitive swimmer).

Basically freestyle catch up is a drill that involves touching your hand with the other one when it is in front of you before you stroke. It helps create a better line in the water as a drill because you don't have so much water resistance in front of you. I find it harder work than normal freestyle and it requires a little concentration for me right now so the backstroke was good to break it up.

I also used the backstroke return to keep my chest stretch open. Then i did some kick on my back holding the board to my stomach. I think this balanced all the kick on my front from the freestyle which feels like it tightens things a little.

Then also did a few hundreds of breastroke and a few hundreds of freestyle without fins and repeated the whole lot again so i essentially did two sets of all this.

Felt a bit nautious - made the mistake of eating something with cheese on it too close to before the swim. I have cheese since my flatmate leaves in 2 days and needs to get rid of her stuff out of the fridge before it goes off. I can usually eat before a workout without any problems but i think I'm not used to all the extra fat in cheese. I won't say i didn't like it and I can't rationalize it since i'm female and therefore have a really high dietry calcium requirement though!

[Sharla]

Saturday 2 hr walk and a stretch

Sunday i didn't manage anything - i had paid cleaning work at someone else's house for 4 hours plus my own afterwards. Then had to be at mum's for a BBQ afterwards.

Again I should have done it in the morning but my flatmate was flying out back to her parents interstate and i'm unlikely to see her again for a long time so i felt it was important to farewell her. Was also awake fairly late Saturday night hanging out with her.

I have to confess i have let my sleeping pattern slip a bit lately. All it takes is one or two late nights in a week to upset my sleepnig pattern. I can usually reset it easily enough but i hate the disruption to my routine in the first place.

Anyway on a positive not i'm trying out some new ideas from a strething book i ordered for my birthday. It has some stuff in it about treating fibroid tissue etc which might prove useful but i'm still nutting out what to do with it.

I've decided i was onto a good thing when i was stretching first thing in the mornings. I think the way i like to sleep curled up in a ball is half my problem. I misinterpreted what Scrap suggested about stretching after contraction - i should have recognized my sleeping style as being a source of contraction.

I slept last night on my back which was better than my side and felt a little better upon waking up.

So I plan to stretch when i wake up, then exercise and stretch again - 2 stretching sessions per day minimum so they will have to be individually shorter.

I've known for a while that i need structure in what i do but i'm just in the process of working out a new timetable.

I think a major mistake I've always made in the past is dropping a timetable immediately as soon as it doesn't work and then having this slack useless time while i nut out another one.

Ultimately even an imperfect timetable is better than none!

I think that's what i dislike about my PhD too - it's just chaotic and with equipment issues and plant growth stages etc it's not something I can pick up and put down whenever.

I'm still working out how to manage my uni work and job hunting but i'm going back to 4:30 am mornings because i think I feel like i've achieved something just by getting up at the time and finishing some exercise before i tackle the rest of my day. That in turn makes me feel more productive and motivated with everything else too.

So this is my initial program for the mornings and I'd LOVE any input I can get. It is still being developed obviously and more specifics will be added as I go.

Mon

• Wake Up Stretch
• Running sprints - 200 to 800 m intervals with walk or complete rest recovery
• Banana and strength training
• Post Exercise Stretch then cold shower

Tues

• Wake Up Stretch
• 1 hr moderate intensity cardio
• Post Exercise Stretch

Weds

• Wake Up Stretch
• Swim sprints
• Post Exercise Stretch then cold shower

Thurs

• Wake Up Stretch
• Monaghetti fartleck
• Banana and strength training
• Post Exercise Stretch

Fri

• Wake Up Stretch
• Long Swim
• Post Exercise Stretch

Sat

• Wake Up Stretch
• Strength training and boxing technique
• Post Exercise Stretch

Sun

• Long stretching session

You'll notice i've put in cold showers on days after i do sprint training. That is because i have read recently that people recover better from sprint training when they have cold showers a lot more than hot ones. This might be for a couple of reasons I could think of.

Perhaps it stops inflammation of tired muscles, perhaps it causes blood vessels to vasoconstrict and channels nutrients etc to the areas most used so they are more concentrated there?

I don't know I'm just hypothesizing but my point is i think it could be worth giving it a go even though I HATE being cold and I LOVE a good hot shower - and when i mean hot i mean almost scalding!

I think I'll keep the wobble board in all strength training where possible even though it means i am not able to do much - i figure the harder it is the more it will benefit me in the long run.

I think of it as being like doing good pushups versus those little chin dipping things people do when they think they're doing a set of 100 but haven't managed one yet!

As for the anti-depressants the psychologist recommended I haven't had an appointment with my GP to discuss it yet.

Another friend who is also a PhD student started on them two weeks ago. She hasn't noticed any change yet except a little nausia which is predicted to go away after a while. From that i wouldn't think they are addictive or too extreme in any way.

She used to be a state funded kiacker and has an amazing sense of humour. She's the first one to make everyone else laugh and cheer everyone else up but I think she's really worn down. Her supervisor is especially loud and domineering and i guess it has just gotten to her over time. I think she has it worse than me though.

I think i'm happy when i exercise and i'm not 100 % sure I need to be on anything. I'm going to research more supplements etc like vitamin Bs which are associated with stress.

I am on vitamin B2 supplements because i was getting a lot of mouth ulcers associated with being run down by stress. My mum took me to a pharmacist one and she recommended vitamin B2. Now as long as I take them I don't get any ulcers. The second I forget though they come back which tells me i'm likely to be prone to those kinds of deficiencies.

Plus although it's not related there must be something in my blood which is different to that of most of my family. I attract mosquitoes - the other night at my mum's BBQ i got bitten no less than 14 times on a little bare patch of skin on my foot. My sister got bitten once (she was sitting next to me) and everyone else not at all! Little discriminatory targeting AHOLES!

[Bomp]

Gotta hate those mosquitoes. I had a holiday in Aus a couple years back and didn't realise the bastards had got me good til the link in singapore on the way home when my feet just started burning. Had to take my socks off where my feet were covered in red blotches, I was lucky airport security didn';t look too closely or I'd have been quarrantined for sure

[sourpuss]

I've heard the cold shower thing as well and it makes sense....I just can't bring myself to do it. Let me know if you notice a difference.

[Scrap]

Sharla see if you can get hold of Feroglobin, use it a lot when Fighters are peaking. It was brought out at first to help women with energy problems while having heavy periods. A chemist put me on to it many moons ago .

[Sharla]

Sharla see if you can get hold of Feroglobin, use it a lot when Fighters are peaking. It was brought out at first to help women with energy problems while having heavy periods. A chemist put me on to it many moons ago .

Thanks Scrap will do!

I think you've suggested it to me before but never got around to hunting it down because it was only in selected stockists and my mum gave me a different brand of iron supplement but i'll get my arse into gear and have another look.

Did my run this morning with post sleep and post exercise stretch.

Used standard back stretches a side stretch and a few hamstring stretches on waking up. Did the side / back stretch where you are lying down with your legs at a right angle and very slowly let your legs go to one side while not allowing your back to arch.

Usually i get a little click in my lower back when my legs fall to the left and nothing to the right although it feels like it wants to go. This morning i got the usually little click to the left and 2 big clunks when they fell to the right. Perhaps my lower back was out and i put it back in?

Then I did the run. I took 15 minutes to find my clothes - stuffed around getting the drawer string back out of my tracksuit pants and hunting for my heart rate monitor being the super organized person I am.

Then I decided for time's sake to do a 45 mintue workout instead of 60 mins which i think is ok for this first week while i'm getting back into a new routine. Hopefully i'll be organized enough next week.

5 minute walk warm up followed by 45 minute run. Did most of it on grass around a nearby oval.

Came home and did post exercise stretches. Roughly followed running exercise stretches in my new book. I like the gastroscenimis stretch. Oddly i feel it in my right side but i think something else is limiting it in the left.

Doing the Soleus stretch i feel it more in the left than the right.

Feel the piriformis stretch (sitting on a chair with leg bent at right angle over knee) in both sides. Actually just getting into position feels like a stretch and i have to be careful to make sure my spine is lengthened properly.

Trunk rotators seem fairly inflexible so i'll have to work on those. Also definitely have a tighter right hip adductor than the left.

Overall my back likes me for my efforts this morning.

[Sharla]

I've heard the cold shower thing as well and it makes sense....I just can't bring myself to do it. Let me know if you notice a difference.

I know what you mean! I've already decided it doesn't count for the hard swim now since I do that in cool water so inflammation is not a problem especially since it's relatively free of impact so i'll only be doing it once a week after running sprints Excuses, excuses!


Not long after finishing my session yesterday i noticed a soreness in the back of my right hip. I continued to feel it though most of the day but it let up in the afternoon and is completely gone now.

I'm actually thinking ti was a good soreness. Maybe some fibroid tissue giving way. Maybe a reaction to my lower back clunking back into alignment.

I suspect it had something to do with the gastrocenimis stretch. I didn't use a strong enough band to actually stretch the gastrocenimis. I was just following my book like a zombie without actually working out where i was meant to be feeling the stretch.

So when i said i felt it in the right but not the left I think i was not actually stretching the right gastrocenimis but other muscles higher up all along the back of my right leg up to my hip.

In this book they stretch it sitting down with the right leg extended and left leg bent and put the band around the right foot. I also parked my back against a wall to support it and not allow any pressure there.

Now oddly enough I feel straighter than I have recently - don't lean towards the right as much. The soreness in the back of my right hip reminds me of a soreness i used to get when running a lot of kms but i haven't felt soreness in there for a long time. I felt stiffness in my quads and pectorials etc but not there. Perhaps i did have a little tear or something back then and didn't know it and it settled into a muscle adhesion.

This morning when i did the same thing where i laid on my back and slowly let my legs fall to one side and my spine clunked again. Not as loudly. I think it adjusted a little further up but it is so different to the feeling like it would not move I used to have. I remember my chiro saying it wouldn't adjust that side when she tried to do it either.

I tried to gastrocenimis stretch again but didn't feel it at all in my hip or along the back of my leg. Now the right side feels the same as the left.

Anyway I'm rambling because I think this is all a good sign and I'm excited basically!

I didn't get to my swim sprints until the evening today.

I managed a reasonably early morning at about 5:30 am yesterday. The plan was to drop it back to 4:30 am today but had a late night at my bro's talking software for my PhD. he gets up late and works late and since he's helping me out i won't complain about that.

I didn't get up when i planned to this morning though and felt like I'd wasted a big part of the day before it began. Didn't feel very productive at all for the rest of the day. didn't really feel like swimming but feel great now I've done it.

Strange how that works really. Exercise is what i need to do to feel like exercising in the first place!

Did a few moderately fast laps warm up freestyle and then got straight into it since I had limited time before the pool closed.

Then did 5 sets of sprints. Each set included 4 X 25 m sprints (1 butterfly, 1 backstroke, 1 breastroke with dolphin kick and 1 freestyle) with 30 seconds break between sprints and 1 min break between sets.

All of the above wearing fins then a few laps cool down of easy freestyle and backstroke without fins.

The whole workout was a bit less than 40 mins but the sprints were hard. I wasn't as explosive as i was last time I did this but i was swimming more often then and had stronger arms from boxing etc so i think that is to be expected for a few weeks.

I'm not sure I was fully recovering in the breaks either like i should to train explosiveness but i didn't have my heart rate monitor to show me the cold hard truth so I was able to operate in denial. I will have to be sure to remember it next time.

I also need to come up with some swimming stretches I can do at the pool stright afterwards because by the time i get home and shower it seems a bit too long.

I think i have a swimming book somewhere which might have a good basic set of stretches i can do after these workouts.

[Sharla]

Right who here has been writing my horoscopes!

I recieved this as one of these little spam emails i get.

Other times it has usually said complete BS which i would ignore or stuff about work which has guilt tripped me into trying to be more productive but now:

"An invitation to a social event given in your near neighborhood could put you into touch with artistic and/or spiritually-inclined people. Some fascinating exchanges could take place, Sharla, and the event might continue on into the night. No matter how late, no matter how tired you are when you get home, try to get just a little exercise in order to clear your head and quiet your mind. Otherwise, you might have difficulties getting to sleep."

There is a guitar festival on near my house soon and everyone I know is aware of how I have to exercise ........................

Ok I have things to do now so I won't procrastinate anymore tonight but seriously! Andre?

[sourpuss]

haha, did they put your name in there as well?

[Sharla]

Gotta hate those mosquitoes. I had a holiday in Aus a couple years back and didn't realise the bastards had got me good til the link in singapore on the way home when my feet just started burning. Had to take my socks off where my feet were covered in red blotches, I was lucky airport security didn';t look too closely or I'd have been quarrantined for sure

Yes they are EVIL little Bastards!