Winter Blues

My winter training plan has been this:

Swim a little. Run none. Barely bike.

Pinked out. Notice my saddle bag - it's furry!


The highlights of the past four months have been two fast bike rides outside, some light hiking in Phoenix, and regular once-a-week or twice-if-I'm-lucky swims. The lack of exercise has not been kind to my expanding waistline and jiggly arms.
My main excuse - I hoped to be pregnant by now, so I didn't want to get my heart rate up, just in case.

Post work hike from my Phoenix hotel. I ran three days in a row , a feat not done for over six months.


While the snow outside melts, this weekend is supposed to be in the 70s. I can't wait for springtime so I have no more excused for not exercising!

Pool Records

I first starting swimming year round when I was 8. So I spent 3-6 days a week in the pool for nearly eleven years, spending up to twenty hours a week in the pool during the peak. I remember getting only one week off in August or September before starting the next year of training. Intense.

If I take a wild estimate at the number of hours I spent in the water growing up, not including dryland activities, weight training, driving time, nor swim meets it's about 6,500 hours. That's like a full time job for 3.5 years, including vacation and holidays. Wow.

I was randomly searching for jobs and noticed some at an Army base I used to swim at when I first started swimming year round. I googled the website and still have two records:

8 & Under
25 Back 17.04 31-Mar-85
50 Breast 42.15 28-Feb-85

Woo-hoo! I'm not sure I can beat that 25 back time right now.

Worm Farming?

WORM POOP
While I stated earlier that I didn't want to harvest worm poop this year, I might change my mind since it's so easy. After seeing this video, I'm really tempted:
http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/videos/index.aspx?id=105370&c=1

Paul said he'd buy me some worms. Is that love or what?

----THE NEXT DAY----------
We were cleaning some leaves off our patio, to both clean-up the mess and start a leaf compost pile, and found some worms. After careful consideration, the worm farm has begun.

I grabbed a large tupperware container, added some dirt, the worms, moistened shredded newspaper, and veggie scraps.

Here's the start of the worm farm aka vermiculture.


In a couple of months of constant feeding and care, we should have some very nice worm poop compost and many more worms. We did bring the worms inside the house, so they wouldn't freeze in the exposed tupperware container.