Sunday, November 25, 2012

30 days in less than 500 words

Well it's been about a month since I last posted. I could write five pages but I will just sum it up briefly. I will be dedicated to Blog at least every other week if not every week.

Leah and I found a place, we move in this weekend! 18 people applied for the apartment and they chose us. Just about everything is included even the heat!! I'll post pictures soon It is a great place on a quiet road and minutes to the Aquatic Center, where I am swimming three times a week; taking masters classes Monday and Wednesday and a one on one on Friday with my coach, Steve.

Training is going really well and I'm seeing great improvements all thanks to Steve giving me a very detailed training schedule every week! After my field tests three weeks ago my training zones have increased and I'm becoming more comfortable spinning indoors in the trainer. My swimming has improved since I joined the Aquatic Center last month. In October 100m took me a minute and 45 seconds. Wednesday I swam 100m in 1:23! I love the classes, every one is different and Maury has so many tools: Fins, pull bouys, snorkels, paddles, kickboards, etc and a VASA Ergometer. These all allow us to focus on the many aspects of swimming one drill at a time.
One cycling technique Steve has me working on spinning at higher cadence. When I first started using the Power Tap, which measures cadence, wattage and whole lot more, I was spinning at around 85, now I'm comfortable at 95. Spinning at a higher cadence is a more efficient use of your strength and energy vs mashing the higher gears. This is a spin workout I had last week:  

A 15min warmup spinning at 90-95 cadence then 6 x 2 min Fast Pedal (ramp up cadence to spin 120+ last min)/2 min easy recovery (cadence can be slow at first, but recover it to 90+ for the rest of the 2 min) followed by a
15
min warmdown spinning at 95-100 cadence.

It was a challenging spin to up at 120+ but I liked it and now spinning at 95 is much easier.

To wrap up my 2012 racing season I thanked all my sponsors by hand delivering a thank you letter with plans for the next year along with a photo of myself thanking the business for their support. It felt great to show them how I did this summer and most couldn't wait to support me again.

I can't wait to sit down with Team Skidmore after the holidays to plan for fundraising for London. Ideas are welcome! Just leave a comment below or email me at megskidmore@gmail.com

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving!