Slightly different workout today. I concentrated on shorter sets rather than distance. I don’t do well with short sets as it is just too many stop and starts and my times are never that great. Anyways the workout summary for today:
Metric
Value
Total Distance
2,525 m
Timer Time
54:45.3
Elapsed Time
56:55.4
Average HR
120 bpm
Maximum HR
161 bpm
Aerobic Training Effect
3.7
Anaerobic Training Effect
1.7
And my workout looked something like this:
Segment
Time
Estimated pace /100 m
100 m Freestyle
1:32.6
1:32.6
Rest
0:15
—
200 m Mixed
3:35.1
1:47.5
Rest
0:12
—
100 m Breaststroke
1:57.3
1:57.3
Rest
0:25
—
100 m Freestyle
1:38.9
1:38.9
Rest
1:03
—
100 m Breaststroke
1:55.0
1:55.0
Rest
0:32
—
200 m Mixed
3:41.6
1:50.8
Rest
0:30
—
100 m Freestyle
1:40.3
1:40.3
Rest
0:14
—
100 m Breaststroke
1:55.9
1:55.9
Rest
0:26
—
150 m Freestyle
2:25.8
1:37.2
Rest
0:16
—
150 m Breaststroke
2:57.9
1:58.6
Rest
0:36
—
150 m Freestyle
2:33.2
1:42.1
Rest
0:26
—
150 m Breaststroke
3:00.8
2:00.5
Rest
0:30
—
325 m Mixed
5:57.9
1:50.1
Rest
0:54
—
150 m Freestyle
2:30.9
1:40.6
Rest
0:24
—
150 m Mixed
2:47.7
1:51.8
Rest
0:33
—
50 m Breaststroke
0:56.7
1:53.4
Rest
0:21
—
50 m Freestyle
0:49.9
1:39.8
Rest
0:16
—
50 m Breaststroke
0:58.8
1:57.6
Rest
0:16
—
50 m Freestyle
0:50.3
1:40.6
Rest
0:37
—
50 m Breaststroke
1:03.6
2:07.2
Rest
0:10
—
50 m Freestyle
0:51.3
1:42.6
My watch miscounted on that 325 one, somehow it added a 25m lap, have no idea why. I never do any 25meter lengths.
I am OK with my freestyle times. I need start and turn practice with those. My breaststroke times suck. I really need to work on those, I am about 20 seconds too slow. I really think this has a lot to do with turns, and maybe some old habits that have never gone away.
I decided that today’s swim would be a 3000 Meter workout that included all of the events that I will be swimming in October. I know this in no way is a true reflection of race pace, but I wanted to prove to myself that I can do this.
My workout is below and the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and 4th Place columns are from the 2025 results in the same pool for the 60-64 year old age group.
Workout Segment / Event
7/19/2026 Time
Gold (2025)
Silver (2025)
Bronze (2025)
4th Place (2025)
Warm-up — 200 m Freestyle
3:40.9
—
—
—
—
Rest
0:26.4
—
—
—
—
1500 m Freestyle
26:09.4
23:34.66
23:39.43
25:04.75
25:06.88
Rest
1:50.8
—
—
—
—
200 m Breaststroke
3:59.5
3:01.02
3:38.74
3:39.92
4:00.27
Rest
1:29.8
—
—
—
—
100 m Breaststroke
1:58.3
1:19.22
1:28.57
1:32.97
1:37.95
Rest
1:57.0
—
—
—
—
800 m Freestyle
14:29.1
12:00.10
12:16.56
12:32.85
12:56.76
Rest
1:09.5
—
—
—
—
Cool-down — 200 m Mixed
3:59.1
—
—
—
—
Now is the time to start working on technique as I have gotten sloppy over the years. I also need to work on my turns. That is where I can shave 10 seconds off of each length, and it is enough to make a difference in the pool. Next week will probably be a series of shorter workouts, but more focused on breaststroke and turns. I think I am also going to start wearing a swim cap again with the hopes that will help me stop loosing core temperature as much as I do.
Today’s workout from Garmin Connect for anyone that is interested:
Well… I might have done something really stupid, but I broke down and registered for the Huntsman World Senior Games being held in St. George, Utah from October 6-10th (The games are more days than that, but that is the swimming portion).
I’m going to swim the 100M Breaststroke, the 200M Breaststroke, the 800M Freestyle, and the 1500M Freestyle. These are all endurance events, which has been the basis of my swim training for years.
I was looking at last years times and was thinking, “hey… I could actually place!” Nice part about getting older, the competition thins out.
The maybe “stupid” part? I have not competed in a pool event since college swimming….. when was that? Oh, 1986……. And what year is this? Oh, 2026….. that is about 40 years. I have been strictly open water since then. I really had decided I would never compete in a pool again, but there are some health concerns that I have been worried about and right now Open Water events do not make sense from a safety perspective.
I went back and looked at some of my swim stats for the last six months with regard to the events I plan on swimming and compared them to the 2025 Huntsman World Senior Games results and found
Event
My Current Training Time
🥇 Gold (2025)
🥈 Silver (2025)
🥉 Bronze (2025)
4th Place (2025)
1500 m Freestyle
26:09.4
23:34.66
23:39.43
25:04.75
25:06.88
800 m Freestyle
14:29.1
12:00.10
12:16.56
12:32.85
12:56.76
200 m Breaststroke
3:59.5
3:01.02
3:38.74
3:39.92
4:00.27
100 m Breaststroke
1:58.3
1:19.22
1:28.57
1:32.97
1:37.95
Training times are strange to compare to race results as they do not always line up. In a race event you are only swimming that event. My training times are part of a longer workout. Also, no block start for training, less adrenaline, and I have a tendency not to do flip turns in training (got to fix that). All of this has the potential to shave about 10-15 seconds off per 50 meters.
I have 11 weeks to the games. I will probably be posting more on my swimming to stay accountable to myself and show progress.
There still be snow in the mountains, actually a little more than the last time I posted, last weeks storm brought a nice coating to the higher elevations. Anyways today started off as my weekend days normally do. I was able to get up, get caught up on some system things I needed to take care of, both on my own servers and the work learning management system. Yes, I know it’s Saturday but this is the best time to do updates in case I need to roll them back and recreate the world. I had a small issue with a major update last week when it required some Apache server reconfiguration that took me a while to figure you.
Then I was able to get Res out for his weekend morning walk. We managed to do a little over 3 miles in a little more than an hour. Res is Go Go Go Go Go until he figures out that we have turned around and are heading back home. Then he slows down to “snail pace” and does not want to end his walk. The problem is that I still need to walk his sister. I am thinking we may do a dual walk tomorrow rather than a singleton walk.
Climber was next on the walk list. She didn’t do all that well either, she was a little pokey today. Maybe it was a full moon or something last night, but regardless we did a little over 3.5 miles and then came back home. She is the opposite of Res, when she is headed home she is Go Go Go Go, she would drag me back to the house if she could.
After Jesse and I had breakfast (or more accurately brunch) it was time to head to Lowe’s to pick up some supplies I needed to put together our expanded hydroponic system for this year. With this years water restrictions we need to be really careful on how we are going to be watering the gardens and the property. Last year we had tremendous success with hydroponics, so we decided to add a little more to the system for this growing season and move some of what we did in the gardens last year into buckets for this growing season.
So, this is what our plan is this year. It is all assembled and I will leak check and start running the pumps tomorrow. I need to give it a good rinse before we can add plants and fertilizer. We will probably start planting tomorrow.
I have been a bad blogger for the last 17 days or so. Life gets busy, you hit a few roadblocks and all of a sudden the blog does not seem that important. I have been struggling with some health related issues again, and have been having some problems keeping my routine on a daily basis. I think some of this is resolved.
Anyways, to catch you up on the last 17 days since April 13th…… I spent a few days in Chicago for a pretty large Home Automation System inspection. It wasn’t a bad trip and I managed to stay in a hotel that actually had walking and jogging capability outside and not on crappy hotel treadmills.
I was able to finally get Climber to her second vet visit so her vaccinations are now all complete for another year or so. I have to make an appointment to get Res in. That will wait another month or so, he’s not due yet but we are moving them both back to VCA as we want them to have access to the 24 hour ER care, and I am tired of not having all of their medical records in one place.
Speaking of medical, I had my cardiac stress test this past week, obviously they could not pinpoint the issue that has been plaguing me for months. Something happens with my heart rate when I work out for a long period of time. It is bad that they couldn’t find it, I was never able to get my heart rate to max out. I just don’t understand why the medical community does not realize that when you have a heart rate monitor that actually tracks everything you do, and you can narrow down the exact conditions that cause the issue, that for some reason they absolutely refuse to attempt to replicate them. A 8 minute walk, run on a treadmill at 30% incline does not equal 30 minutes into a 6 mile run. And, I think I am having afib but with a heart rate in the low 40s my watch can’t determine afib or anything else. Heart rate to low.
As I mentioned I have been having issues with getting into a routine, this is primarily a routine in the pool with my swimming workouts. I have had real problems with the town rec centers, as great as they are, group activities and just general over-use has caused me not to be able to count on my swim workouts for the last month. I have had to be going back and forth between two centers and with one of them I have to change my schedule around to to swim lessons, teams, pool closures, etc. It has really been a distraction. So, I finally joined a VASA Fitness, a private chain of fitness centers that have pools. Today I did my first workout there.
It’s a nice, 25 meter, 3 lave pool, but the lanes are wide enough that you can reasonably share lanes. Also, it was clean and the water felt nice and was not over chlorinated. It was a good swim, now to see if in May I can get my distances back up again. Of course I do have an upcoming business trip or two that may cut into my swim time, but that’s OK I can work around those.
For April, I did have some wins with my workouts and fitness, it was overall a good month, with a few minor setbacks.
62 workouts, 15 swims, 3 runs. A total of 42 hours and 127.5 miles logged. On the health side:
I did see some progress on both weight and fitness. I think in the next month I should make my weight goals, the question is will I make my fitness goals. I really don’t know right now. My goal all year has been the start of the Mountain Lake Swim series. The first swim is a 2.5 mile swim up near Boulder, CO. I do have a concern that it may be un-wise for me to do this swim because of this stupid heart rate issue I am having. I am still going to train for it, but I am not sure it will happen. I really need a 5K swim to see if I can still do it, my max in the last year or so has been a 3.5K, I am short by 1500M. That is the goal this coming month, a 5K swim.
Anyways, I think that is it for now. I promise I will try to post a little more in May. I was doing so good before this few week setback in April. Talk to you soon!
Today starts off as any other day does. Up with the dogs, let Res out, let Res in, let Climber out, let Climber in. Give them their morning snacks. Put together mine and Jesse’s coffee. And start on my never ending email list. For some reason my Technical Support task list exploded over the weekend. I am not sure why, that will take me a little bit to go through.
I did spend some time on maintenance on this WordPress site this morning. I finally broke down and installed the Redis caching server and it took me a while but I was able to get WordPress to recognize that. Maybe that will speed up the data base operations a bit. We will see. I also had a few security related items I needed to take care of and those are now done. Updates and stuff like that.
I have decided that today will not be a swim day. I think I may have overdone it over the weekend. Tomorrow is another day. I was able to get out for a walk for lunch, I tried to take Res with me but he decided that he only wanted to go 1/2 way around the park and made me bring him home.
After I was done for the day I took Climber outside for a while, thought she may want to play ball, but not really. She wanted to be in the sun more than anything else.
And then of course Res had to have his turn. He wasn’t all that energetic and just wanted to go out and smell around.
And then back to work for a while for me. And then our usual afternoon stuff, their 1/2 mile evening walk, dinner for them, dinner for us, and that’s it for today. Not all that much exciting.
A FaceBook memory from this morning. The pack 10 years ago. I think Ranger and Mindy would have loved Colorado. I don’t think they cared all that much for Florida. Mindy would have had me walking all over Aurora and probably the Front Range as well. She used to love her long walks.
Someone asked me why I hold myself accountable for making these daily posts, especially since it is possible that I am the only one that reads them. Sort of a rude question, but a valid one. I am not sure how many people read them, I have them open for comments, but that has yet to happen with the exception of some spammers, and those get deleted. Here’s the thing, I do have family out there, they are not part of my life right now for a variety of reasons, but I like to think that someday they, or their kids, may like to know a little more about me. The other thing is, that there is so much negativity on social media these days that my posts, that are really just about life, may offset some of that. Why don’t I post directly to Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, X (or any of the others)? It’s about advertising dollars. The social media platforms for years have made a ton of money from our intellectual property. It’s sort of the contract with them. They use your content, use your thoughts to stir up controversy that causes other people to click on like,dislike,love on your posts. Then they feed you advertisements. It’s in their algorithms. Well, if someone is going to use my content I want it to be linking to my site, where someday I may be able to get some advertising dollars directly on my own (not that I am holding my breath on that as Google has told me my site “lacks relevant content”). I do try and cross post to the other platforms, but my intellectual content stays on my sites.
Anyways, Good Morning! I think I am going to write today’s post in parts today. Started off the day as usual, got up a little late, it’s Sunday – I’m allowed, dogs out, in, and snacked. Res is still being picky about his snacks, I am not sure what’s up with that but I wish he’d stop. I really think he is just bored with everything. I think Angel Ranger is up there at the Rainbow Bridge making the case to take Res’s Greyhound Card away from him. It must pain him to see all of these missed snack opportunities. And, since Climber has to loose 9 pounds I can’t keep giving her Res’s leftovers.
Once Res and Climber had their food, I spent a few minutes doing some site maintenance on my WordPress block (this one), and I do need to go update the Learning Management System for work (Alpine Intel University) as I don’t like doing that one during the week. Too much risk for downtime when someone is actually going to be using it. Today some of the plug-ins had to be updated, then there was a security release to Moodle itself, and then there were some app upgrades for the Ubuntu back-end system. One of these days I probably need to do a distribution version update, but I try to avoid those like the plague….. the server is a VPS on Digital Ocean and I try to avoid the distribution updates until I really need to do them. The VPS that this site runs on is a little more forgiving, and I keep this one current more frequently.
Res got his walk, he did well. We did 3.5 miles, a little over 5K. He wanted to go further but he has a little soreness on his pads that I am watching.
Next is Climber’s walk. She did much better than yesterday in terms of pulling on my shoulder. She was actually pretty good. She did 3.48 miles, slightly less the Res, though I am not sure why. It could have been the walk back to a trash can that I had to do with Res. We did make a stop along the way so that I could submit a report of a water leak along Buckley.
After a good breakfast/lunch/brunch I went over the to pool for an hour. I was planning on a 1 hour swim but was forced to take a 15 minute “safety break”. That is such bullshit, and it makes it impossible to get a good swim in, but I guess that is something I am going to have to keep in mind going forward. I am hoping they realize that the policy normally ignores those swimming laps. I am having a lot of problems preparing for my Mountain Swim if I can’t get an hour in the pool.
After I got back from my swim I decided it was time to get the hydroponic supplies out of storage and get an inventor of where I am at with supplies this year. I also wanted to build the double buckets we are going to try this year for our cucumbers and maybe some other vegetables. We were planning on adding some additional raised beds, but I just can’t see that happening based on our current water restrictions. I think the better idea will be to do most of our planting in hydroponics where I can control water use and chemicals (fertilizer, food, etc).
Take some 3 gallon square buckets, drill holes in the bottom of the top one, to allow fast drainage into the bottom bucket. Put a bulkhead type fitting into the bottom of the outside bucket, making sure it is low enough to let the other bucket sit inside of it, and then stack them.
I have to give credit on this idea to DIY Hydroponic Gadens by Tyler Baras. We have done hydroponics for about 10 years now and I ran across this book one day when I was traveling to Portland, Oregon and decided to stop at one of my old hangouts, Powell Books, and I came across this gem. Lot’s of new ideas and some that will be an improvement of things that I have done in the past. Lot’s of new experiments this year. We have 5 of these buckets built.
I still have to add the supply and return piping, but here is this years basic setup, minus the reservoir and the supply/return.
The buckets still need to be put up off the ground. I am going to use a 2×6 on cinder blocks for this. I have the 2×6 and all I need is the cinder blocks. Once that is done I have to run my return line across the bottom back to the patio, the resevior will sit on the patio itself at the base of the retaining wall so we have natural drainage. I am going to use PVC from the buckets, I will also be using a horizontal PVC pipe across the bottom of the rails at the edge of the ledge. We didn’t have good luck with the hoses last year and I think I want to make a change in that regard. I also think I am going to be putting some valves into the drain lines from everything so I can better control the level of the water around the roots.
Had a Salmon, Asperigus, and Shrimp for dinner this evening, and now we are having a relaxing evening with both dogs sleeping off their day.
I have been remiss in posting for the last two days, the bottom line is there was not much going on. Today, however, was a busy day. I didn’t get everything done I wanted to get done, but that’s OK, it was a Saturday. I started off the day with my normal get up, have coffee, let the dogs in and out, give them their snacks, and then wade through my personal email. do a quick check on work email – I always make sure nothing urgent.
When Jesse got up I too Res on his morning walk, today was a lone walk and we did about 3.25 miles. It was a good walk until Res noticed that I was starting to turn him back to the house, then he changed speed from bunny speed to snail speed. He likes being out and about and when I turn back to the house he notices.
When we got back home it was now Climber’s turn. I took her on a slightly longer walk because she walks a little faster than Res does and she needs her exercise, she needs to loose 9 pounds. We have cut her back on her food a bit. I am being a little stingy on her treats, and I am going to start figuring out how to start giving her more outside time during the weekdays. Anyways, her part of the walk was really good, except for something that I will describe after her walk gallery.
I love our Prairie Dogs, the are cute, they are funny, and even Res and Climber love to watch them. They are harmless. They build their colonies in empty fields, they do not build in peoples lawns, and they have family units. So, imaging my surprise and horror when I see some asshole in the field next to one of the churches up on Tower Boulevard in the middle of the Prairie dog colony.
What this idiot was doing was using a shovel to seal off one end of the tunnels and then he was sticking a long hose with a funnel into the other end of the tunnels and dumping something, I assume poison, down the hole and then sealing the colony into the holes. The way he was approaching it, he has done this before. As soon as I saw what he was doing and started taking photographs of him, his actions, and his license plate, he suddenly put his stuff away and got really nervous.
I want to point out that there are so many things wrong with this. First, poisoning entire colonies of Prairie Dogs is wrong. Second, he did not mark the field so no one knows what chemicals he was using. Third, if another animal gets one of the poisoned Prairie Dogs they will die was well. Poison is forever. Third, this is baby time, this is the time the young ones are born and in the caverns. Given where he was, this apparently is a sanctioned activity by the Church. Perhaps someone should sit down and read a few passages in the Bible about compassion and all that stuff.
I will be filing a formal complaint with all my photos to the State Wildlife Department, the Aurora Police Department, the Aurora Animal Control department, and the State Department of Licensing (wildlife control is a licensed activity and I somehow doubt this idiot was licensed.) There is nothing I can do for that colony of Prairie Dogs, but I can sure follow-up on this and make sure at least this idiot’s actions are seen and noted.
So, after I walked back home from that little discovery, I sat down and had breakfast with Jesse. And then I decided I wanted to go swim. I got to the Central Recreation Center, and believe it or not, got a lane pretty quickly in the lap pool. Unfortunately that did not last long. I had just gotten about 300 yards in when there are kids jumping into the lap pool without looking. It turns out that they had to close the main pool because yet again someone had a bathroom accident in it. This is now two weekends in a row, and that means that the pools will be bad tomorrow.
I gave up and decided to drive over to the Utah Indoor Pool that just re-opened and everyone keeps telling me that I should try. It’s a 25 meter pool, a little longer than the 25 yard pool I have been swimming in, But, it’s about 6 miles from the house and takes me a little longer to get to. I was able to get in a nice 2000 meter swim. I was annoyed, but recovered. I haven’t swum in a 25meter pool in a while so it took me a while to get used to the wall that had moved (25 yards to 25 meters — do the math kids.)
When I got home I decided to tackle putting the irrigation system box in place for the right side of the backyard, one more step to remove some heavy water use from the system (we are moving to drip and micro irrigation for anything that is not lawn area. It’s just not an easy thing to do as the yard is clay and I have to find the lines that I can disconnect and the ones that I need to tie into.
Anyways, then it was time to take Res and Climber on their afternoon walks, and feed them, feed us, and relax for the evening. I managed to get the laundry done, well actually waiting on the last load to finish drying, but one less thing that I do not need to worry about tomorrow. On my list of things I really want to do tomorrow is to dig out all of my hydroponic planting stuff from the shed, figure out where it is going to live this year, and then I want to build the double buckets that are now sitting in the living room still packed. This will be a part of the hydroponic setup this year, and I think that should keep me busy most of the day. I may skips my swim tomorrow, not sure yet on that one. I will see how I feel in the morning. Nothing’s wrong, but I do want to get some stuff done around here at the house.
Anyways, Res and Climber say goodnight and maybe we will see you all tomorrow.
And I think with this post I am caught up. Sorry, but I hate to admit that I was behind by two days of posting and then also needed to get today’s post in. Today was a “at home” or “in the office” day after yesterday’s travels.
Not all that much to write about today, I did get out to swim during my lunch break. I think I am going to shift my swim time a little later in the afternoon, to maybe 12:30-1:00pm start of my break. The pool is way too busy earlier and once again I was shoved up against a wall sharing a lane and I scraped the top of my right hand something awful. But, eventually I was able to get a lane by myself and finished my workout.
I only did 1750 today, but I do have problems with other people in my lane, would not be bad if the lanes were not so narrow, but me being 6’3″ and I have a very wide breaststroke kick. I need to work on that, but that is the last of my worries. I need to increase distance.
The rest of the afternoon was catching up on some other issues regarding tech support, processor support, and other related tasks. Finally I was able to finish at about 3:30pm MT and spend some time with Jesse and the dogs. Climber has a little bit of an attitude problem growing and we are going to have to deal with that. Jesse and I have always been about the dogs being dogs, but she is really pushing her luck recently. I need Mindy to make a visit and tell Climber to knock the crap off.
Anyways, I am tired today, so it’s enough for today, we will see you tomorrow.
And today I did have to go into the field and do an HVACi inspection up in Fort Morgan area.
It was a residential property that had water intrusion, but it is a special property. It was one of those that the walls are insulated with straw bails. This is an extremely efficient form of insulation, but is time consuming and very expensive to build.
Look at how thick those walls are, and you can see the straw “blocks” that are being used for insulation. I love seeing construction like this, unfortunately there was some damage to the property, but the owner was really nice to work with and very helpful. And, they will be able to fix the issues and it will all be good. My trip up there was just one step in the process.
On my way home I was able to take a short “lunch break” and get my swim in. I have been trying to get a mile in every day during the week. I really need to try and get a 2 mile swim in one of these days, but during the week I am sort of tied to my desk, and on weekends I try not to take too much time away from things I would like to be doing here at the house.
Anyways, that’s it for today, I will see you tomorrow.
