Muscle cramps

The arch of either foot cramps about 25-35 minutes into a pool workout.  Phoebe said to do toe pointing exercises.  Jeff Ernst at Kaiser Permanente said take OJ, Tonic water and magnesium at night.  He also said NUUN might work.  I have been trying the triple threat.

With a slight modification:  I took the juice, tonic water and Mg during the workout.  If the depletion of electrolytes was occurring during the workout, taking the remedy at the dime of workout would be the most effective, assuming effective absorption from the gut.  Taking the dose the night before would allow the body too much time to get rid of the extra electrolyte load.  Result:  I had a hint of a cramp today.  One last week.  Overall, significant improvement. 

The National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI (a unit of the National Institutes of Health) did a study on bananas and potassium levels in people with and without Exercise Associated Muscle Cramps. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499889/ 
The conclusion included some discussion about whether the efficacy of bananas to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of muscle cramping with exercise came from their effect on potassium levels (negligible) or on glucose levels. 

For me the jury is out.  I will continue to suck down my mix of juice, tonic water and magnesium while swimming.  If the cramps only happen once a week, I might call it a win.

Next, getting the timing right for taking the remedy after starting the workout.  15 minutes?  20?  We hope to know soon.

Swim Lather Rinse Repeat

I'm obsessed with the butterfly stroke in swimming.  The challenge:  figure out why some trips to the other end of the pool feel good and others feel like I'm swimming through cold honey:  suffocating, slow and sticky.  Maybe I feel good on the 25 yards out, but on the 25 coming back I fall apart

Sometimes, I suspect a failure to take breathing seriously.  Other times, I just blame bad technique. 

Maybe I had a breakthrough this evening.  For 20 minutes, during my butterfly drills I focused on keeping the amplitude of my up and down excursions to a minimum.  I had to remind myself to really work on blowing out and sucking in my breath.  The stroke has so many parts.  Timing plays a greater role with butterfly than the other three strokes.  I swam some full stroke lengths with my arms skimming the water during the recovery phase.  I wanted to know what I looked like performing drills and full stroke--I hadn't brought a camera and no one told me how I looked.  I asked myself:  Did my hips sink following hand entry?  Do I kick with or after hand entry?  Was my chest too shallow?  Did any of that matter? 

With 15 minutes to go before pool closure, I swam some full stroke 25's, mindfully keeping the amplitude low.  I tried not to climb too much when getting a breath, nor sink following hand entry.

It felt good, but I forgot to breathe well.  Swimming butterfly is like trying to do a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle nine times in 25 yards. 

So far, repeat performances elude me.  It is a work in progress.  No quitting.

Lather. Rinse, repeat.  Breathe, stay small, breathe. 

Snow day.

Today, snow all day until 3 p.m. with 2" accumulation.  The roads, off limits to me with no snow tires on the car. 

What to do on a snow day.  Soak a leather bike seat to advance its break-in.  Ride it mounted on the sport bike for 10 minutes. Ride the touring bike for 10 more minutes.

Take a nap.

Look outside.

Read.

Make chicken, rice, spinach dinner.

Look for clothing to send back to LL Bean. 
Assemble a table cloth hammock.

Oh, Geez, I hear wind and hail again!

Fixing the furnace

As morning > afternoon, the temp in my house fell to 61 F.  I felt no heat from the radiators.  Pumps were running cold water through the system. 
Into the basement to inspect the boiler.  I touched cold pipes that should have been hot.  I flicked the power switch off, then on, the boiler started up and then fizzled.  Recalling a $100 visit by a repairman, I pulled the hose under the firebox of the boiler and began to poke into the hole where it connected, and little bits of hard water deposits fell out.  I though water might come out, so I tried to undo the nut around the hose connector without success.  I turned on the boiler and this time it stayed on. I watched the needle on the thermometer rise to 120° and then to 145°.  Case closed.

Failed cellphone pocket for backpack hipbelt.

Stupid rationale for making a cellphone pocket for the hipbelt pocket of my Osprey Exos 58:  Another pack I used, the ULA Circuit, had a hip pocket that swallowed my Samsung Note 4. I wanted the shallow pocket of my Exos to do the same.

pocket in a pocket

I started with just a black vinyl sleeve that held the top third of the phone, hoping that the phone would stay in the pocket.  A few times it didn't stay in the pocket and the black sleeve would flop about when I removed the phone--that made replacing the phone with one hand cumbersome.

Pocket of vinyl and ripstop

I added the bottom 2/3 of 1.6 oz ripstop nylon which helped keep the phone in the hip pocket, but it still flopped enough to make replacement clumsy. Design issue:  the phone case attached to the hip pocket with a snap on the middle front of the phone case.  Rather than make another pocket that snapped to the bottom of the hip pocket, I quit this project in favor of another location because my upper arm rubbed against the phone case when I walked.  Potential new site:  top of the shoulder strap--two loops present attachment points.

February 22: Update:  positioning a phone on the top of the shoulder straps can interfere with the load lifter straps above the top loop.  Instead, I placed two snaps on the shoulder strap webbing below the adjustment buckle and two matching snaps on the phone case.
Now that I've got the phone where I want it, I can't remember why I wanted it in such an accessible spot.  No cell signal in the wilderness.  I'm planning to use paper maps with only occasional phone use to confirm my path near unsigned trail junctions.  😀  Oh, yeah, on training walks in town, I can check my pace and mileage or plug in my ear buds and tune in NPR, etc.

Vandals!

The pool at the gated Community where my mom lives is heated year-round to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's 4-6 degrees warmer than most lap swimmers can tolerate and only about 14 degrees cooler than the jacuzzi, but most people who use the pool move pretty slowly or maybe the warmer water makes them slow.  The pool has one wave dissipating lane divider and no lines on the bottom to help swimmers stay straight. Until recently.

One day an elderly gentleman complained about the "vandalism" that had just occurred. He pointed out 4 lines crudely drawn on the bottom of the pool from one end to the other. Just 4 lines, no graffiti, no obscenities, just 4 lines. I was happy to see the lines but I said nothing in view of the man's ill temperament. He said management might consider installing security cameras. He said "they had to have done it at night. It must have taken at least two or three of them and a lot of time. And the pool guy can't figure out how to get the lines off. It must have been some kind of Grease pencil."

The pool's still hot but I can swim straight. I noticed another swimmer in the pool swimming over one of the lines and still bumping into the wall or the lane divider--I laughed but not out loud.

I changed the subject. I said that I'd heard about increasing break-ins in the community. The conversation moved on to drug addicts, at which the man said we should give them all the drugs they want but with arsenic mixed in. That so shocked me that I couldn't respond. I don't know where such idiots come from.

We have an idiot in our President Trump. Yet the local bumpkins think they've discovered an outrageous crime and want to murder drug addicts.

Slow is fast

I discover "Slow is fast" and "less is more" a few times a year.  Today I swam relaxed drills to add technique, applying mindfulness to swimming.

Butterfly. Doing the stone skipper drill (hands recover underwater) as relaxed as possible,  allowing a focus on timing the pull to when I have my head positioned near the water surface. Focus also on hand position during the pull.   Work on kick next to see how it augments the stroke.

This is complicated. Other people just get in the water and swim--I make it difficult.