Well, you hold one nostril closed with your index finger, like this...

Ha. Philip Werner has a blogpost here on an inelegant topic. It reminded me of my first day as a high school cross-country coach. The school was just beginning cross-country and none of the boys (just boys...it was the olden days) knew anything about it, or about running distance in general. We were jogging slowly in a group and chatting to get to know each other when one of them asked to be excused, and headed off for the school building. He returned quickly, then another boy needed to go in. When the third boy asked, I realized this couldn’t be what I at first thought it was. So I asked, and received their common answer with incredulity. They had needed to blow their noses. So my first lesson as coach was to teach my apparently virus plagued and ultra-fastidious crew how to manage this procedure without benefit of kleenex.

Runners,of course, also drool, froth at the mouth in hot weather, bleed from untaped nipples in cold weather, frequently produce odd noises from one orifice or another, and occasionally fall victim to poorly timed bodily functions. As a senior in high school, I beat a very good runner in very tough two-mile when he, ah, lost control of himself. In college, I ran with a half-miler who threw up after every race. And, of course, we spit a lot (sorry, sweet B), and often use our shirts as flannels, bandages, or bar towels. We are a fairly disgusting crew taken all in all. Much worse than most walkers or hikers. Climbers? A toss-up.

And that brings us back to Philip’s post. In the winter mountains, I use a two-step process that relies on digital technique followed by handkerchief or tissue for occasional touch-ups. And now you know SO much more than you needed to.

Nose bubbles

A minor breakthrough at swimming class the other evening. I’ve recognized that retaining any oxygen at all in my mouth wrecks my ability to inhale properly when I come up for air. I always think I’ve done this right, but usually haven’t. Clearly I need some mechanism to be sure that I expel all that O₂. To work on this, I grabbed a kickboard, pushed off from poolside, brought my right arm down along my side, and from there gave myself a little “trigger” by pursing my lips and forcing my tongue hard against my palate to remind me to force whatever air was in my mouth into and then out of my nose, rotated, rolled my head up, and took a good breath. I was able to keep this going, breath after breath—a huge advance for me. Then I began to bring my right arm up and over to simulate a real stroke, while still leaving my left hand in place on the board. That worked smoothly, too.

Until it didn’t. Mine clearly wasn’t the only unattractive cranium in the water, and discombobulation inevitably raised its ugly head. Smart for a change, I just stopped the drill, decided I was happy with what I’d managed, hopped insouciantly out of the pool (class was almost over, anyway) and cheerily headed for the showers.

I think I had a breakthrough. Now I need to figure out the best way to  consolidate it and, eventually, build on it. Next week is the final class of this session. I’ve got to admit that I’m surprised and disappointed at how much trouble I’ve had with this basic skill of breathing. But now I’ve had this little encouragement, too. I’ll be sticking with it, of course, and getting in the pool more often to work on things. At this rate, I may not make my November mile, but I’ll get there eventually.

Stand by for a post or two about ski adventures with sweet B.

Over the Rainbow

How’s this grab ya? I think it’s terrific. (It took me a while to notice that’s a cello her accompanist’s strumming.)



I’ll be looking for more of her stuff.

Bilateralism

My friends (and H) are urging me to learn to breathe to both sides as I swim. It’s apparently a good thing generally, and helps keep your technique from getting lopsided. Given that I still gag and sputter no matter which way I breathe, and that even a lopsided technique would be superior to the slap, wiggle, gag I now manage, I’m just going with the good thing approach.

The trick to good breathing while you’re swimming the crawl turns out to be exhaling fully first—weirdly and astonishingly difficult to do, especially when your face is in the water and you’re otherwise ineptly thrashing about. I admit to throwing a minor fit over this issue the other evening, which would have gone unobserved except for  the echoing crack the foam kickboard I was using made when it somehow slammed onto the surface of the water. It promises it won’t do it again.

One of the on-line sources I’ve checked on swimming suggests I try to run while holding my breath, and then to let it all out and breathe in again quickly to demonstrate how awful it is, and then I’ll be more likely to do it right underwater. Quite right, of course, from the points of view of both O₂ and rhythm. But I don’t need to be persuaded, I just need to know how.

What I’ve decided is that I need to be in the pool more if this is going to work. So when I re-up in two weeks, I’ll get a full Y membership and try to get over there two or three times a week.

In other exercise activities, it’s getting almost light enough early in the morning for me to put away the blinky light and headlamp when I go out to shuffle. Probably about two more weeks for them, as well. No breathing problems to report.

In the small bedroom, I’ve collapsed sweet B’s redundant crib (she sleeps on a fold-out couch now), reestablished the Total Gym in its old spot, and begun pumping away. The usual tedious drag. But no breathing problems to report.

And in both these activities, I’m perfectly bilateral.

Going swimmingly

Swimming knocked me out yesterday evening, and I’m still beat this morning...and sore. Lots of stroke work and kicking, not to mention the all-important breathing. I’ve made enough progress to begin putting all three elements together. I’ve made nowhere near enough progress, however, to put them together properly, smoothly, correctly, or anything close. Chop, chop, thrash, flail, gasp. Maddening. When I was young, learning most of my sports, this would have driven me to a kind of frustrated rage, usually unattractively expressed in a kind of monomaniacal obsession. Now, though, I’ve achieved the wisdom that descends when frustration becomes a constant, rage requires too much energy, and obsession is a distant memory. So I’m trying to just churn along doing my best and, I hope, improving slowly.

On the other hand, when my teacher was talking to me about the way I was lifting my arms out of the water during recovery, she said, “there’s a drill for that, but I don’t want to get you bogged down with drills.” I imagined all my old friends laughing. I got my drill. Of course, having achieved the wisdom of old age, I’ll do it reasonably. Pretty reasonably.

My “S” words

I have a short list of words in a file on my computer, all starting with “S” and all tending to a similar meaning. But, despite the fact that they make up a sort of family group and some are considered synonyms, each has a slightly different connotation. Probably partly because of this (and partly because my brain has started playing that wonderful trick of keeping mental objects of desire just beyond reach), I can quickly and reliably call to mind only numbers one and three.

Here they are:

Seamy—Sordid; base, corrupt, unwholesome, morally degraded.

Seedy—Worn and shabby; unkempt, Somewhat disreputable; squalid, Showing signs of wear and tear or neglect: scrubby, scruffy, shabby, shoddy, sleazy.

Sleazy—Shabby, dirty, and vulgar; tawdry. Cheap, dishonest or corrupt; disreputable.

Sordid—Filthy or dirty; foul. Depressingly squalid; wretched. Morally degraded. Exceedingly mercenary; grasping.

Squalid—Wretched, as from poverty or lack of care. Morally repulsive; sordid.

These are pretty good definitions, I think, pulled some time ago from one on-line dictionary or another. I love the fine distinctions. Seedy is merely “somewhat disreputable,” for example, while Sleazy admits of no adjective. I’m also fond of Sordid’s “depressingly squalid,” and its “morally repulsive” as opposed to Seamy’s somewhat kinder “morally degraded.” Of course, all variations have been on my mind lately as I watch what is hilariously called the “Grand Old Party” choose its candidate.

Along those lines, I can’t resist noting that the current pace-setter, often touted by silly people as an intellectual, doesn’t know the difference between “grand” (“magnificent”) and “grandiose” (“characterized by feigned or affected grandeur”). Maybe he just needs a list

What a concept!

I walk in the morning, usually with Paul, though he’s been off cosmopolizing again. Every other day, I get up early and shuffle. Tripping along slowly—my goal right now—in real cold requires more layers than actually running. A baselayer top or two under a midlayer and a windbreaker or softshell. Shorts on the bottom, maybe longjohns, and always a pair of SportHills (oddly, nearly identical to Ron Hills—I wonder if Sport and Ron are brothers). But here’s the kicker. Before I go back out to walk, most of this has to be pulled damply off and replaced if I’m not going to freeze in wet insulation while I’m walking. So yet another baselayer top, under an R1 Hoodie, under my new Mountain Hardware Compressor jacket (which is okay, by the way, but not as okay as my old Mammut Stratus). On the bottom, longjohns again, under R1 tights, under a wind layer. And I also use multiples in headgear, mitts, running flats/boots, and all that. I don’t have enough hangers or cubbies  for all this stuff, so I have piles. (Well, I don’t actually have piles, thank goodness, but I do toss things into mounds. By the time I’m finished shuffling and strolling and have stripped down to enjoy breakfast, it looks like a bomb has gone off in a Siberian haberdashery.)

Hah! But now there is a drying rack in a corner of the kitchen! Brilliant. Amazing the things some people think of.