Learning.

Thank you to everyone who's commented helping me figure out what's growing in my garden!

El confirmed my suspicion on the hosta.. I have lots of them. LOTS of them. Most of them are *just* coming up (though some are throwing up blooms already), but I talked to my mother-in-law last night and she's going to come out next weekend and help me dig up the hostas and the bleeding hearts and break them up and replant the ones I want to keep (in places less detrimental to the foundation of the house). I need to put out a call to local folks to let them know if they want any hostas or bleeding hearts to stop by next Saturday afternoon. Also on the agenda for that day is to move the rhubarb from the side of the house we never see to a garden spot in the main yard. Oh, and start tomatoes, but I might do that sooner.

We have differing reports on the about to bloom bit - either an iris or daffodils. I'm still holding out for tulips, personally. We've been getting night-time rain here the last couple of days, so hopefully the blooms will appear shortly and settle the question once and for all. In any case, though, it's one of the ones that's going to have to move.. it's going to get overrun soon by the tall stalky yellow flower things.

Spaaz commented in response to a comment I left in her blog about swimming and training and such. I thought I'd need to hit a stroke clinic, too, but since going to the chiropractor and paying more conscious attention to body rotation during my stroke, I'm finding that my stroke is a lot more even and powerful without tiring me out as much. (Don't get me wrong, I still only made if 5 laps yesterday, but I wasn't bone-crushingly exhausted the rest of the day and I didn't feel like I was dragging my legs behind me as dead weight the whole time, so this is a definite improvement.) My goal is to complete the swim for the sprint tri I'm doing as part of a team in early June in freestyle - last year, which I did on about two weeks notice - one of which found me in San Diego for the AIR Forum - after not swimming for more than a year and never having done an open water competitive swim, I ended up doing the whole thing in breaststroke out of a combination of self-defense and nerves about getting off course. I'm getting more of a head start this year, so here's hoping I can even out and strengthen my freestyle stroke and get my lung capacity up enough to allow alternate side (instead of needing every right side stroke) breaths so sighting will be easier.

But the really exciting bit is that I found what I thought was the Galway method, but turns out to be the Galloway method after being inspired by Spaaz's mention that she sometimes walks when she competes in running events. Knowing that this is "acceptable" behavior gives me some confidence that I maybe *could* complete a sprint-tri on my own this summer. For me, the hardest part is the run - I really am not a runner, though I've swam and biked off and on for years. The run in a tri is also the last leg - on the idea that you're less likely to kill yourself if you get too tired to continue running, but falling off a bike or drowning would be Bad(tm) - so it's the part I like the least and would have to do when I'm the most tired.

*BUT*, if I can set up a training regimen that includes a constant run/walk cycle (which according to the little rules of thumb on the Galloway website, would be about 2 minutes run/1 minute walk for me), and then stick to that in a tri setting, I *should* be able to do it.

So the plan for the next month is to focus on swimming primarily during the week and add in cycling on the weekend - I need to rebuild some muscle generally before attempting to add running in again or I'll get discouraged too quickly. After the team-tri in early June, I'll switch to working on all three activities each week - likely by figuring out a three day on/one day off pattern with the day before the day off including a brick (which is where you do two consecutive workouts in two different activities, e.g., a quarter mile swim followed by a 15 mile bike ride). I'll have to find a sprint tri late enough in the season to shoot for, but I think last year there was at least one in early September that is hopefully an annual event.