A return

Very happy this morning, swimming went really rather well.

As I said yesterday I headed down to my first Swim Smooth session today. I wasn't expecting much or planning for it, I was really just looking to get through around 3000m of swimming. In the end though I got through a good solid hour of swimming, around 4000m worth. I didn't do the entire epic Wednesday morning Swim Smooth session, but I did get through a big chunk of it. Quite happy.

The swimming felt okay too. The other day I said my catch and pull through were feeling off, but today they felt improved, I was much less aware of it. I think that has a lot to do with my arm being less sore. Less pain means that it is impinging my stroke less. The pace still has a long way to go, but that was not the focus of the session for me this morning. The highlight for me was getting through 4000m without it killing me. The session had a good mix of swimming too, some 100s, 200s and even a couple of 500s done with intent, so it was a solid workout. It was good to get through a few longer efforts with no ill effects. After my shoulder surgery it was long stuff that was the hardest to get back so it was good to do some of that without it being a disaster.

Riding tomorrow and with any luck I will be riding on the road. The forecast is looking okay enough (10% chance of rain) that I think I will risk it. It is, of course, meant to be 4 degrees, which isn't ideal. But that is why they make warm clothes. Lots of warm clothes. It is Winter after all, so it wouldn't make sense to complain too loudly about the weather.

On the topic of complaining about the weather though, Oh boy, chilly this morning. 6 degrees is the number I heard thrown around and I can well believe it. Always seems to be the chilliest on swimming mornings. Not sure why that is. Properly cold in Perth terms.

Other than training the other activity for the day was seeing a one of the physios down at Front Runner Sports about my niggling achilles (if I call it a niggle then it isn't an injury, see what I did there). It hasn't got any worse or anything, it is still a persistent niggle, the thing is that it isn't getting better either, so I figured it was time to have a chat to somebody about it. Turns out what I have been doing to manage the niggle is about right, which perhaps says something about how often I have been injured (nothing good). Increasing strength is the key and to that end I have some new exercises to do (add them to the list). The good thing is that there is no reduction in running required. I am not all that surprised by that since the niggle hasn't really required me to decrease my running up to this point anyway, so in that regard it is a continuation of status quo. Still it is nice to have a niggle (injury) that can be managed within the bounds of training. Three weeks of strengthening should see it good apparently. That will be nice, a return to truly pain free running will be very welcome. Plus, like a lot of these injuries, I should come out a stronger runner on the other side.

Now, time to dig out some knee warmers and a cycling vest.