10 Random Things and a Swim

Let us get the boring stuff out of the way, shall we? Wednesday's much anticipated swim ended up being quite bland. Not a disappointment, but disappointing. No records were broken and I just couldn't put together any respectable sets.

300 Repeats - 3000m
500m - warm-up
300m - 5:14 (1:45min/100m avg.) (<0:45 sec rest after each)
300m - 5:12 (1:44min/100m avg.)
300m - 5:11 (1:44min/100m avg.)
300m - 5:09 (1:43min/100m avg.)
300m - 5:12 (1:44min/100m avg.)
300m - 5:11 (1:44min/100m avg.)
300m - 5:23 (1:48min/100m avg.)(slow on purpose, focus on form) 300m - 5:31 (1:50min/100m avg.)(slow on purpose, focus on form)
100m - cool-down

Nasty, huh? The one positive thing I want to take away from this experience is that mentally I was much tougher/more-refreshed than in weeks past. I had a couple of rocky spots where I wanted to say "F*** THIS," but I quickly regrouped, focused and finished out the sets. I'm happy to be getting into the water tomorrow to work on some longer continuous distances and drills (all un-timed).

My post-workout, pre-made dinner of the week looks like this...

That's broccoli, lentil salad and andouille turkey-sausage (94% fat free). 

Oh yeah, and a HUGE glob of ketchup. Mmmm.

Triathlete and blogger Amanda Lindsey, known in many circles as a "F***ING ROCKSTAR," has shared ten cool/funny/weird/unknown things about herself in her latest blog post. Her blog, in addition to her list, is a very fun read so I'm going to do my best to return the favor and come up with ten somewhat-interesting, somewhat-defining things about myself...

[ONE] I have a ridiculous aversion to popsicle sticks and those small wooden spoons they used to give you in grade-school to eat your ice-cream sherbet with. I can't eat popsicles b/c of this, or watch others do so. And my god, I get the shivers just thinking about it...

[TWO] I deflected the thought of ever running a marathon for YEARS by using the excuse "If I train to run a marathon, then I'll turn into a twig... and I don't want to lose all of the muscle mass I've worked SO HARD to achieve/retain!" Sure enough, I eventually pulled my head out of my ass, found a huge spoon and ate my words last October (marathon race-report still in draft form.... i know!).

[THREE] I work as an architect in DC and am about two months away from quitting my job to go travel around Thailand and India for a month. After that, I am moving to New York. Nobody at my work knows yet.

[FOUR] For the last three years (since grad. school), I have been satisfying my passions for cooking and graphic design by designing + writing my own "cookbook." Think of it as the love-child between Alton Brown and the designers of Metropolis Magazine. I'm a huge science-behind-the-cooking nerd.

[FIVE] I can play five instruments: the clarinet, bass clarinet, oboe, piano and guitar. The piano is definitely my favorite (guitar comes in 2nd), even thoughI have been separated from my piano now for almost three years. Despite that, I have been amassing a collection of sheet music for our eventual reuniting, which consists mainly of music from Scott Joplin (ragtime) and Ruben Gonzalez (Cuban Jazz, late pianist for the Buena Vista Social Club).

[SIX] I also cannot stand the taste of coffee. I love coffee flavored ice-cream, beer and candy, but the taste of coffee itself has eluded the favor of my taste-buds. Worse than that, however, is the awful stench of coffee breath. I often wish I liked coffee so that my poor sleeping habits would have a remedy and my workouts a performance-enhancer, but then I recall friends' testimonials of pounding caffeine headaches.

[SEVEN] Speaking of headaches, I haven't had one in over 8 years.

[EIGHT] Four years ago, I went into the doctor for a routine procedure to remove a cyst but ended up having a tumor the size of a golf-ball removed from the right side of my abdomen... while I was awake... and watching. I then pulled out my phone and asked the nurse to take a picture of it before she sewed me up. She did. The tumor was benign.

[NINE] I love baseball. I also love listening to it on the radio. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to sit outside in the evening by a fire, after a hard workout, with a beer in my hand (in a glass, ALWAYS) and listen to baseball on the radio.

[TEN] I am getting married in September and at that point will most likely take my fiancee's last name (West) over my own (Lemecha, pronounced Luh-Meck-Uh). There is a variety of professional/personal reasons I could offer up for why it'd make sense, but nothing really ground-breaking. I want to say it just makes sense and leave it at that. I've never known anyone or have any friends that know anyone who have taken the wife's last name. For what it's worth, I also have two brothers.


Well, hopefully that was worth the read. I'm not going to specifically tag anyone and subject them to the ENORMOUS pressure of coming up with a list of their own, but it would be cool to get to know some other people by way of a few interesting facts.

Looking forward to: A quality swim on Friday and my first outdoor bike-ride of the year on Saturday.