Things

Tuesday: Swim 3,500 yards, run 6 miles

Things that annoy me:

1. Cooking. I am, of course, burning about 2 billion kazillion extra calories a day, so it stands to reason that I would need to eat more while I'm training for this Ironman. But my stomach either isn't as big as it used to be or is more unsettled (maybe since I keep running off to the gym for hours at a time to bring digestion to a screeching halt), and I can't seem to eat normal-sized meals anymore. That means I'm in the kitchen, staring into the perfectly well-stocked refrigerator, seven times a day, trying to figure out what nutritionally sound yet delicious mini-meal to make for myself. Usually I pick milk and Cheerios. Did I mention cooking annoys me?

2. Creepy lap swimmers. So a guy gets into the lane next to me today and tries to start up a conversation during the 15-second rest intervals I'm taking on a set of 50s. He wants to know if I've had "swimming lessons," and not wanting to try to sum up my entire swimming history in the next 10 seconds, I just say yes. Then on subsequent visits to the wall, we talk about whether the pool is as long as the college pool (yes) and how many lengths make up a mile (69), and he sort of seems to get the idea that I'm not really there for conversation. I finally get to a set of 400s, figuring that will free me up from trying to be polite, but then I notice that as I'm coming into the wall to do my flip turns, he is going underwater in his lane to watch me! More than once! Eventually, he gets out and goes into the hot tub, and sure enough, every time I turn my head that direction to breathe, there's his creepy little head, watching me swim. Now, I know I am utterly fascinating, but wouldn't you think he'd have some sort of internal Creep-O-Meter that would alert him that he's in the red zone?

3. Intensity. I had to do a little rearranging of the workouts this week and unintentionally put a high-intensity swim on the same day as a high-intensity run. Oh, my. I am not a high-intensity kind of gal. (Well, maybe more so in the pool.) And the scary thing is that the training schedule said the run was a preview of the kind of intensity I could expect in weeks 23 through 34, and to "get psyched to get fast!" Oh, my.