Bike computers and shoes

Yesterday, I got on my bike and—the computer was dead.  Well, the screen was; I think it just needs a new battery?  What I really need to do is just get a new garmin..but whatever.  Anyway, I finally gave up trying to make it come to life, and had to ride without knowing my speed or distance or anything (strava on the phone app in my back pocket doesn’t help much real-time).  I got used to it, of course, but it was still aggravating!  Turns out, I kept a pretty decent pace, so maybe I should intentionally ride “blind” like that more often.  If nothing else, it’s a good confidence booster to know I “can” ride just fine based on feel.

Swimming this morning was…fine.  As fine as it can be, I guess.  I just feel so clunky in the water, especially right when I start.  And then I start to feel like I get into a groove, and then I lose it.  It’s also hard to tell sometimes if I’m actually going faster or I just feel like I am because I am working harder due to terrible form; or if I’m actually swimming more efficiently, or I just feel like I am because I have slowed way down and am hardly moving.  I think I’ll try to get at least one more lesson in before September, but hopefully before August.

It’s also frustrating to not know how fast I “really” am.  So far, I’ve actually swam a lot faster in races than I am at the pool (or lake), which is great!  But, it also means that I get pretty down on myself when I go to the pool and feel like I swam pretty well, and it turns out I was way slower.  Not like my timing mechanism is very accurate in the pool—just using the stopwatch on my watch, and then there’s all the extra time to start/stop it, and turn around at each end, etc etc etc…  I guess it should just be a lesson in not focusing on that so much, and focusing on the actually swimming and getting better.

In other news, I got new shoes today!  My old shoes were starting to feel a little run down, and it was about time to get new ones anyway.  I’ll try to slowly break them in and still use my others for a bit longer, but I want these new ones to be my shoes for August and September. Most importantly, they are BRIGHT PINK!  There’s also some blue, but I wish the blue was a little brighter.  Oh well.  I definitely need to change the laces I think, but we’ll see.