A little update on the exercise tip. I have upped my running course again. Where it started at 1.85 miles, and then went to 2.1, now my course is 2.57 miles. My goal is to keep upping it, at least until I get to where I can consistently run an entire 5K. Then I’ll re-evaluate. I’ve set a few exercise goals, which unfortunately conflict with each other

• Exercising for 1000 miles this year. According to my exercise log, as of June 15th, I am at 299.2 miles for the year. With 199 days left, that means I need to do 28.17 miles per week. As a comparison, this week I have done 23.3 miles and the last few weeks have been 26.2, 20.1, 39.3 and 22.7. The conflicting part of this goal is that in order to reach it, the optimal thing to do would be to bike a lot. In 1/2 hour of exercising on a bike, I can do maybe 8 or 9 miles, vs. 3 miles running or 1/2 mile swimming. The week I did 39.3 miles was because I biked twice that week, vs. only once in the other weeks. But since biking is my strongest event, I don’t really have any other goals that are bike-specific (besides the non-timed one that I have to ride on every street within 2 miles of my house and of course T de M 2007.
• My running goal is to run a sub-20 minute 5K by the end of the year. I think this is an aggressive goal, but I think it’s possibly doable. Of course, to do that, it will require more running, which isn’t as efficient as cycling for sheer mileage. Once I get to the point where I can run 3.1 miles without having to stop, then I will start to work on speed. I have a few training programs that I’ve looked at on how to get faster.
• My swimming goal is to not drown in my upcoming triathlon. After that triathlon, I’m not sure what I’m going to do for swimming. I think I would like to continue to do triathlons, but I don’t think I’m going to run any more this year. So I would like to continue to swim some to make sure I don’t lose any of the (limited) skill I have.

So maybe if I run 3 times a week, bike once and swim once, that would give me my 5 days of exercise, with 2 off days (I usually do Wed and Sun).

So I went to the Y last night to swim. I’m not sure if it was the swim lessons from Tuesday night “clicking” or if it was due to the concerted effort I made to slow down and pace myself, but I was able to freestyle swim the whole 800 (32 laps) without having to stop. I got a little sloppy and out of breath towards the end, but I was able to do it. Naturally, my time was much better. My last 800 was 25:33, and yesterday I did it in 22:31. My time for 400 was 8:30, which is a huge improvement over where it was (and you can also tell how much slower the last 400 was for me)

But anyways while I was there, I saw something about the pool being 25 yards, whereas I have been going under the impression that it was a 25 *meter* pool. I asked the old lady at the front desk if it was 25 yards or 25 meters and she said that she didn’t know, but that 64 laps was a mile. I said “LISTEN YA OLD LADY, WHETHER IT’S 25 YARDS OR 25 METERS, 64 LAPS IS NOT (EXACTLY) A MILE, SO WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME SOMETHING USEFUL!?!?!?” Oh, maybe I just made that last part up. I checked when I got home and it does look like it’s 25 yards. So that kind of explains why my time (13:50) at the Miami triathlon was so much faster than my practice time of 11:24. I had figured it was just the fact that it was 50 meter lanes instead of 25, and that probably did play a factor, but the fact that I was swimming 10% longer certainly played a major role.