Some Actual Training

I've finally recovered from being sick and the agility trial. Those stupid trials wipe me out for 3-4 days afterwards, esp. the ones that require me waking up at 4:30 a.m.

Tri Training
Monday:
3/4 mile walk with Cody in the a.m.
1350 yards, 45 minutes swimming at masters (N. Bldr. Rec.) in the p.m. I didn't record the details of the workout, it didn't go well anyway. I couldn't keep up with the assigned intervals and had to improvise. Swimming always suffers the worst when I miss workouts.

Tuesday:
1 3/4 - 2 mile run with Lola in the a.m.. My regular trail was too muddy so I had to make up a new route and I'm not sure of the mileage. The snow on the top of the mountains was magical. The pain I was in was not. Running is not coming along very well these days. I think it's because of the cold weather in the mornings. In any case I'm not seeing any improvement and feel like things are getting worse. I've not been writing too much about it because I don't want my blog to turn into a big oh woe is me bitchfest but it's effecting my training so I want to make some mention of it so I can keep track.

Wednesday:
1 1/2 mile run in the a.m. around Wonderland Lake with both dogs. Surprisingly they behaved fairly well except for an outburst at a deer. Run was not great.

Thursday:
1 1/2 mile run in the a.m. around Wonderland Lake with Cody. Didn't go well, hobbling around for a few hours afterwards.

2050 yards swimming at masters (S. Bldr. Rec., Jane coaching)
This workout went much better than Monday's, primarily because we did a lot of drills so I had a lot of time to rest and recover in between sets. I was able to keep up with the intervals anyway. At the end of the butterfly drills I could really feel an improvement but my butterfly is so atrocious that just about anything is an improvement. I wasn't having as much luck with the freestyle drills. We were working on not letting the leading arm sink and having a quick powerful catch which is the main problem with my stroke so it was good to work on it but I didn't have much improvement.
150 yards warm up on my own
Warm Up Set:
200 yards freestyle as follows:
50 yards breathing every 5th stroke, 50 yards breathing every 3rd stroke, 50 yards breathing to the off side, 50 yards breathing a lot
then 50 yards non-free
then 50 yards kick
Do this set twice straight through, no rest

4x75 yards on 1:30

Then we did a bunch of free style and butterfly drills, around 400 yards total

4x150 yards on 2:45, pulling w/ paddles

Agility
Cody only, Wednesday, lunch time, Biscuit Eaters, sunny & 50's
This was an excellent practice all the way around. There was a course set up already, probably from a class, so I decided to give it a go. There were some tight turns with traps which is exactly the thing I need to work on with Cody. I had some treats in my hand and everytime he made a nice turn avoiding a trap I stopped, made a big fuss and gave him a treat. This worked out to be every 3-4 obstacles and he managed to get around the whole course perfectly so he got a lot of treats and was really excited. At the end I tossed his tennis ball for him and let him play for a bit. After a little rest I took the clicker in one hand and treats in another and ran around the field calling 'here'. Every time he came to my hand I clicked and gave him a treat. We ran around the whole field with him glued to my side and he didn't take a single obstacle unless I told him to. He was really excited about this game too. Then I set him up in front of a jump, sent him over and called 'here' while turning my shoulders the direction I wanted him to go and pointing my hand nearest to him. I had treats in this hand and the clicker in the other. When he turned towards me I clicked and he ran over to get his treat. The point was to get him to wrap the jump tightly. I have no idea if this is the best way to teach wraps but it seemed to be working and I was getting some tight turns though not as tight as I'd eventually like to see. It's going to take some time but I'm sure had can do it. Eventually I'll add in more jumps and see if I can get a tight turn when he's going full bore but we need to work up to that. First he needs to learn to respond to the 'here' cue and the turning of my shoulders. He does respond to this now, just not as quickly and tightly as I'd like and we get lots of off courses.

Some other good things from the session-a perfect 2 on/2 off on the A-frame and beautiful weave pole entries (2 sets of 6 poles split up on the course).

I stopped the session while he was still really excited. I was so pleased that he was paying attention the whole time and didn't shut down or look stressed once.