June 22: Swim - 50m pool, 6:10-6:50pm

It's been a while since I went to the pool in Tokyo Gym, so I decided to try hard today. Today is very hot summer day and even though I went there earlier time, the pool was packed! I got stuck every 100m so it's not good for long distance swim. When I ended up getting stuck again, I changed to breastroke and swam with break in between. I swam 1.2km in total (200m x 6)

I can feel my body strength is weakening, so it's hard to swim 100m within 2 minutes and swim for 200m. I would like to try to extend this to 400m, so I decided to do some muscle training at home.

Since I felt my stamina is decreasing when I cycled last time, so I am going to start bike training at home as well. I trained for 10 minutes with extra pressure. Even though it was only 10 minutes, I was catching my breath and sweated a lot. Next time, I'll monitor my heart beat.

June 19: Bike - 6.3km hill course, 4:40-4:53pm

I finally took my bike and cycled after having a month break. The course is same as usual, the hill course. However I didn't have much time so only cycled one lap.

As I thought, I felt my stamina is gone due to a long break, but the data is not so bad. I can tell that the number of heart beat is higher though. It's only two months to go now so I'm going to focus on maintaining the body strength.


Result: 6.3km, 13'55'' Max: 61.8km/h Ave: 27.2km/h
Heart beat: average 144
First half until after the uphill: 8'30'', max 159
Latter half: 5'25'' max 149

Not training for a while and going uphill is pretty tough!

June 19: Swim - 20m pool

I couldn't go to 50m pool last week during the weekdays since I had a 3-day-business trip.
I can feel the body weakening when I don't exercise. So during the weekend I went to the pool and focused on the form and the speed. I was able to swim 200m in less than 4 minutes, but the question is how long I can swim keeping this pace. Therefore my target for this month will be to swim 400m within 8 minutes.

200m x 3 and 500m x 1, which sums up to 1.1km.

June 7

I'm now registered to the Triathlon!

Today I've received a contact from my friend Erik via Skype and found out that I'm registered to Sterkepeer Triathlon. The website is http://www.sterkepeertriathlon.be and in deelnemers, you can find both myself and my son's name there.

It seems like it's only us who are taking part from Japan.

Now I'll need to focus on my knees. I'll have just less than 2 month to go through swimming and cycling, and for running, I'll use stairs to build muscles, squats to strengthen my knees, and see how it goes on the day.

Also, I've swam 1.5km in 50m pool on June 2nd, 1.2km in 20m pool on June 5th.

May 24: Swim - 50m pool, 6:20-7:10pm

It's been a while since I wrote my blog but I've been to 25m pool and 50m pool, twice each. I swam 1.2km each. In 25m pool, 750m was the longest swim in one go, and 500m for 50m pool.

Today, the pool was relatively empty so it was easy to swim. Usually I swim first 200m and take a break, checking my body and how busy it is. However today was pretty empty so I decided to see how long I can swim in one go.

In the next mid-speed lane (mine is a slow lane), a young lady was trying to beat me, so I put some power in to my arms and tried to increase the speed, but still slower than this lady. So I used my legs. I avoided getting cramps by putting some power into my thighs and not to my calfs. Then I was faster than her. In the last 25m, I was able to beat her. And this was so interesting, after the turn, I continued to use the similar technique to my legs. It doesn't get too hard in terms of breathing, but I can feel the water around my face is flowing faster. It felt like when I put fins to my feet in Belgium, and I can feel my body is floating. It was almost 500m point so I slowed down to 2 beat speed and swam the rest of it. Sometimes when the lane gets stuck, then I turn at 25m pool but managed to keep the speed and swam 1km. This meant that I've achieved my goal. As I thought, when I swim continuously, the body get adjusted to the water. Therefore, I think I can swim longer.

From now on, I'm going to focus on my legs and manage to keep 2minute for 100m speed. I'll have to search for the ways to make my legs effective.

For the last 200m, I managed to swim in 38 strokes for 50m. This is a great news. I'm going to aim for 2 beat legs and make an effective speed.

Since I managed to achieve 1km swim without a break, my focus will be to swim 100m in 2 minutes.

May 8: Swim - 25m pool, 7:30-8:30pm

The doctor visit on May 7th ended up finding out that with googles, I am permitted to swim, so it has been 2 months since my last swim on March 3rd. Initially they told me I won't be able to swim for 3 months, so I'm very happy :) I assumed that my muscles and stamina has reduced dramatically so I swam slowly and counted how many stokes I had for 25m, and it resulted as 16 strokes. Yes I have lost stamina (muscles). For a while I swam 50m each by confirming the form, and then swam for 500m. It took 11mintues which is not so bad as I thought. The target is to swim 1km non-stop in 50m pool, and by end of July, swim 750m in 15minutes or so. It might be a challenging target, but since I have no idea where I'll be for running due to my knee, I thought I'd have the swim target higher anyway.

Result: 50m x 6, 500m x 1, 200m x 1, total 1km

April 25: Many things happened

On March 5th, I injured my finger (cut my left thumb almost in half!) so I couldn't swim for a whole month.
On March 11th, due to Japan disaster, most of the pool has closed for a whole month due to electricity outage and saving electricity.
On April 19th, I had an operation for cataract and have been told not to swim for 3 months.

So from one to another, hardship came to me as if it was trying me to give up the triathlon. Although the harder it is, I usually increase the motivation. On April 3rd and 16th, the neighbourhood pool opened so went there to swim and confirmed that I can swim 800m continuously.

I already have plane ticket so I'll need to prepare bicycle, clothing, wet suits. Also it'll be difficult to train right beforehand (i.e. open water experience with wet suits), so I'll be doing it on the day, and I hope it will be a good experience. It still remains as my task to increase stamina and muscles.

My son now can swim over 1km so he is also taking part, hence there will be 2 people participating from Japan. The photo link for the Sterke Peer Triathlon is here:

http://www.wezelopdefoto.be/p486564210

It looks so much fun!