Exercise: swim for 1 hour
I swim with triathletes almost every Wednesday morning. The alarm goes off at 4:45 AM. I sleep in clothes that I can wear into the gym without looking like I showed up in pajamas...when in reality I do just that. I grab my gym bag, water bottle, and eat some sort of snack in the van. It really depends what we have in the cupboard...something that does not take too much effort to open or prepare. I usually default to graham crackers, but may try protein bars.
There is often a few groups of two or three swimmers who swim together. Some are elite triathletes and some are simply exercising for the benefits of staying in shape. There have been times there is no one there and I have to figure out my own workout last minute. Before I started swimming in March of 2012, I had no idea swimmers did actual workout plans like 100 yards with the kickboard, 200 yards freestyle easy, 100 yards fast, breathing techniques, drills, "pull," etc. I used to simply swim back and forth laps...which gets super boring.
My crew is two to three ladies who have competed at the Ironman level, but currently exercise for the sake of staying healthy. One of them brings a workout we all follow. They keep track of how many yards they want to go. I believe their yardage goal is around 2200-2600 yards which is about 1.25-1.5 miles. I swim slower than they do and I do about 3/4 of their workout. I modify it as I go.
Our warm up is almost always 300 free, back, or breast (you can do whatever you want), 200 pull (swimming with the pull buoy between your legs thus you can work on your arms), and 100 kick (using the kick board). Today we did a ladder workout. Start at low yardage such as 3 x 50's and work up to one 200 yard and then back down to 50's. It was a good workout. Some mornings I feel like my form is off and my arms are not following through. I felt that way a bit this morning. There are good running days and bad running days and swimming is the same way.
Sleep: I also am blogging about sleep because the eat/sleep/exercise is a cycle. All three components affect one another. I slept better, however I woke up at 1:30 AM to a scary dream of a man coming at me with a knife. I hate these kind of dreams! Then I woke up again at 2:30 AM. I finally slept until right before the alarm goes off.
Eating: My cousin mentioned the idea of eating breakfast salads. I had never heard of a salad for breakfast. I did a little research via "Google" and discovered there are a ton of good recipes. We had baby spinach in the fridge leftover from dinner. I made a vegan salad with fresh fruits, peanut butter for dipping, baby spinach and sprinkled with lemon juice. I could eat this every morning. It was delicious. My husband would tease me about eating this way for breakfast, but I would rather eat this than a bunch of processed stuff. I have leftover salad to eat for lunch plus fresh carrot and cucumber from the garden. We are not eating as healthy for dinner with homemade macaroni and cheese, but I feel like I can afford to slide a little bit on dinners if I eat healthy the rest of the day and continue my exercise.
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