I call this the all in one plus (+) workout because I swam all my events in one workout, one after the other, and then added additional distance on the end to get the 5K that I wanted to swim today. In reality I swam over 5K because my watch missed 225 meters in one of my drills, and then it missed another 26 meters along the way as well so I had to swim extra to make up for that. Rows 6 and 12 in my workout structure table below. I totally drives me nuts when the watch does that.
8/2/2026 Workout Summary
Metric
Value
Total Distance
5,000 m
Total Swim Time
1:55:44
Total Rest Time
19:28.9
Total Session Time
2:15:13
Swim Sets
23 (plus 1 drill interval)
Average Swim Pace
1:48 /100 m
Average HR
121 bpm
Maximum HR
171 bpm
Average SWOLF
39
Workout Structure
Set
Stroke
Distance
Time
Pace /100 m
Rest
1
Freestyle
200 m
3:10.5
1:35
0:29
2
Freestyle
1,500 m
25:46
1:43
1:00
3
Breaststroke
200 m
3:52.9
1:56
0:41
4
Breaststroke
100 m
1:53.8
1:54
0:47
5
Freestyle
800 m
14:08
1:46
1:20
6
Mixed
175 m
3:46.7
2:10
1:15
7
Mixed
125 m
2:15.4
1:48
1:02
8
Mixed
100 m
1:47.1
1:47
0:36
9
Mixed
200 m
3:43.0
1:51
0:45
10
Mixed
100 m
1:49.9
1:50
0:34
11
Mixed
150 m
2:46.5
1:51
0:29
12
Drill
25 m
6:41.2
—
1:19
13
Freestyle
25 m
0:23.6
1:35
1:18
14
Mixed
100 m
1:51.9
1:52
2:04
15
Mixed
100 m
1:44.1
1:44
0:55
16
Mixed
200 m
3:43.0
1:51
2:25
17
Mixed
100 m
1:49.6
1:50
0:27
18
Mixed
300 m
5:37.4
1:52
0:22
19
Mixed
100 m
1:53.6
1:54
0:28
20
Mixed
100 m
1:49.5
1:50
0:23
21
Freestyle
100 m
1:44.5
1:44
0:13
22
Breaststroke
100 m
2:03.0
2:03
0:29
23
Mixed
100 m
1:54.2
1:54
0:07
I asked AI to track today’s results as it is the start of a new month compared with the last time I swam a similar set, and then compare the times to the 2025 Huntsman Senior World Games and this is what I was given.
This workout stands out because the four primary race-event swims were completed early, before the mixed technique work:
Event
Time
Previous Benchmark
1500 m Freestyle
25:46
26:09 (7/19 race simulation)
800 m Freestyle
14:08
14:29 (7/19)
200 m Breaststroke
3:52.9
3:59.5 (7/19)
100 m Breaststroke
1:53.8
Best interval 1:44.0 (7/26)
Here’s the comparison using your 8/2/2026 race-specific workout, your previous best training performance, and the 2025 Huntsman World Senior Games results (Men 60–64).
Event
8/2/2026
Previous Best
2025 Bronze
2025 4th
1500 m Freestyle
25:46.0
26:09.4 (7/19)
25:04.75
25:06.88
800 m Freestyle
14:08.0
14:29.1 (7/19)
12:32.85
12:56.76
200 m Breaststroke
3:52.9
3:45.6 (7/30)
3:39.92
4:00.27
100 m Breaststroke
1:53.8
1:44.0 (7/26)
1:32.97
1:37.95
I think the breaststroke and 800m freestyle times are being affected in this workout by the earlier 1500m freestyle. I am going to have to try and gets some actual race condition times to see where I am in each of the events over the next few weeks.
I chose a rest day today, and I will do a second one tomorrow. Rest days are important as they give your muscles a chance to heal and recover. I was feeling a little strained in my last two swims and I think I may have been ready for a rest. Given all the health issues I have had during July 2026 I have done pretty well with my workouts and swimming. The print is really small on this calendar, but this is my activity for the month:
I mentioned yesterday that our lettuce and chard in the hydroponics had run it’s course. This evening I planted the next batch in their little sponges and I hope these will actually do something. We have not been having a lot of good luck getting seeds started this year. First, the ones I tried starting in the basement near the end of winter got to cold. I forgot to use the warming mats and they just did not germinate. Then we tried starting some additional ones out in the actual hydroponic tubes themselves and I think the seeds got to wet and rotted.
So, we now have 24 Swiss Chard seeds in their damp sponges, and 24 Lettuce seeds in their little sponges. I am going to keep them a little less moist than we have been doing previously. I have a feeling these sponges hold more moisture and the seeds may be rotting. I talked with a few people in a group I am part of and they reminded me that when seeds are in the soil they dry out, get wet, dry out, get wet, and so on. The hydroponic material holds much more water and may not allow that dry out process.
Grow little ones! I want salad one of these days from a non-grocery store source.
Aurora Colorado is under Stage 1 water restriction this Summer, and I fear it is going to get much worse before it is over. Currently we are only allowed to water grass on Thursday’s and Sundays, not more than 20 minutes per zone. Also, they have put excessive use fees into place so we are not allowed to go over 50% above our Winter usage.
Our lawn looks almost dead.
I am hoping that it comes back but I am not holding my breath. It’s half tempting to start replacing sections of it with sand. but I do have some concerns about that as well as I do not want the ticks and fleas that sand comes along with on the dogs. So, for the moment I am not going to worry about the dead grass.
The hydroponics are doing really well. We have already had one crop of lettuce and Swiss Chard picked and multiple harvests, and the spinach did really well. But, you can only get so many cuttings out of a crop before you have to re-plant. That is in progress right now. The cucumbers are doing really well, we have a stack of them ready to be processed in the kitchen. We also have a lot of growth starting on the eggplants. The green peppers are doing well also. And, we got some hot peppers also.
The only thing that we have planted in actual gardens this year is the zucchini squash. I guess you can’t kill those with hot weather and high sunlight.
Next year I am going to expand the hydroponics again. I may try to plant tomatoes in them. We have many tomato plants this year in our grow boxes and in regular pots in the yard, but they are struggling with some sort of “rot” on the bottom of each tomato. We can’t figure it out but we loose about 50% of our tomatoes this way. It could be the heat also. The tomatoes have been the biggest struggle on this property that is a mile closer to the sun than anyplace we have ever lived before.
That’s what’s happening in our little bubble of agriculture here in Aurora, CO.
One of the things I have learned over the years is that I have to take a rest day here and there and have nothing to do with the gym, the pool, and fitness for a day. Today was a rest day, tomorrow will be a full pool workout. Today started off like most of my weekends, taking Res and Climber for their walks. I decided to take them together today because it going to get too hot by the time I got back with Res and go to take Climber.
Of course about 1/2 way through our walk Climber heard someone using a nail gun on some remodeling work that they were doing and it scared her…. She HATES nail guns and any loud bangs with a passion. So, she decided we were going home! There was no if, and, or buts about it. We were going home. She took the lead position, knew all the turns to get back to the house, and pulled the entire way back. Res was like, “slow down girl, where’s the fire!”
After we got back I had to run a quick errand to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get a new swim suit as mine are starting to get all stretched out, which is not a good thing. Chlorine is a killer on all of them, and it also doesn’t help that I have lost a lot of weight since I bought my last ones. I am right between Large and Medium in suit sizes, sucks as they are either way too tight, or too loose, and either direction is a problem. But, life goes on.
I got back to the house and it was time to torture the dogs…. well… in their world, torture the dogs. In my world, make the dogs smell less like dogs. Res and Climber got a bath. Climber was first, no photos were taken because she as a total wimp and let out the “greyhound scream of death” as soon as water touched her. You would think she was melting! Then I got another scream when I was rubbing her down with a towel. She did get scolded because I am not going to entertain that game. If she gets away with murder I will be fighting this every time she needs a bath. I can also promise she will not go another 9 months without one.
Res was next. Res just jumps around a little when he gets wet, but it is no major issue. Once you start massaging the shampoo into his fur he just stands still like a perfect gentleman. Rinse him off, he is good, and he almost falls asleep when he is getting his towel rubdown. Then, he comes back into the house and makes sure all his fur is in the right place. Takes him a few hours to lick it all back into place.
They are now both asleep and they are over it. After that Jesse and I spent some time outside. Had to water the tomato plants, and the hydroponics and then cut what little grass we have in the front lawn. I then ran the mower around the pitiful excuse for the back lawn and Jesse edged it with the weed-eater. I also pulled some weeds from around the squash plants and some of the other areas of the rock portion of the yard.
By the time we were done with that, it hit 100 degrees here in the Mile High City. I can’t believe it, it’s almost Florida temperatures. At least the humidity is not as nasty as it was in Florida. Tomorrow we are supposed to have another 100 degree day, maybe a little hotter. I just know I hope these temperatures break sometime soon. We got our last months power bill today and all I can say is I miss the solar panels and will be solving that problem here eventually.
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.
