Frequent commenter Blue Rattler noted yesterday that he likes it better when we stay positive around here, so I’m gonna give it my best shot. With that in mind, I’ll note that yesterday’s swim practice with the Tri Club was really, really good. I put in two thousand yards and felt good doing it. The workout was as follows:
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| The Olympic Symbol for Triathlon |
5 x 100 @ 1:35 warm up
5 x 100 free @ 1:30 (tempo)
5 x 100 free @ 1:25 (tempo)
200 kick
200 pull
100 warm down
What made the workout awesome was that my friend Ben was there, and he has a big race this weekend, the Pat Griskus Olympic Triathlon. So he was looking to do a little speed-work but not to put in too much in the way of yards. So he paced me through the first set of 5 x 100, swimming a 500 mid-tempo with no rest while I did the interval work as a kind of steeplechase. Basically, I spent 5 x 100 yards trying to chase Ben down from a fifteen second head start. That was fun. After that, Ben rested for about five minutes while I put in the first 4 x 100 @ 1:25, and then we raced full-out on the last one. Again, fun. But tiring.
Still, I took my heart rate after that last interval, and it was at exactly 160 bpm. That surprised me big time. I’d have expected it to be closer to 170. So bottom line, even at near max-effort in the pool I was still only rocking a heart rate a little higher than my aerobic threshold. I don’t know if that’s the result of muscle fatigue in my arms, a declining max hart rate due to aging, or if it’s just a sign that I’m a MUCH better swimmer than I am a runner or rider. Regardless, I was tired after that interval, and so the rest of the workout was short and pretty easy.
Ben wants me to sign up for an open-water mile at the end of the month, but I’m not sure I’m up for it. I mean, I’m swimming reasonably well, but I don’t know that I want to commit more time to the pool when it’s so obviously my other disciplines that actually need the work. With that said, it is of course better to swim well than to swim poorly.
For you running purists out there, this workout is similar to a track workout where you warm up with 5 x 400 yards at mid-tempo and then do two sets of 5 x 400 yard tempo runs, holding your 5K pace and resting for the 40-yards between the end of one interval and the beginning of the next one. Of course, that kind of thing would absolutely kill me if I did it on a track, but in the pool, well… We all have a background right? I would assume that others are as comfortable working in their primary sport as I am working in mine. Certainly they smoke me when we race in their best-sports. It’s the same for me when we race in mine.
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Several news outlets this week ran articles detailing the ways in which former Florida governor Jeb Bush is at odds with the currently ascendant parts of the Republican Party. And that’s good news because Mr. Bush is generally considered to be a GOP star, and here he is defending traditional Republican orthodoxy. He specifically noted the ways in which today’s Republicans would be at odds with his father and with Ronald Reagan—a factoid that’s been much-noted in the Democratic media but perhaps under-reported by traditionally conservative outlets.
In any event, I personally would like to see more mainstreaming of the GOP. Bush the Elder was one of my favorite presidents, and I think it would serve the country well if we could reconnect with some of his decidedly establishment-Republican values.
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| The Latvian Coat-of-Arms |
The Economist this week ran a piece comparing Latvia to Greece. Essentially, Latvia went through something very similar to what Greece is going through now, save that they actually managed to successfully implement the kind of austerity measures that most commentators think are both impossible and hopeless in the case of Greece.
The article itself is interesting but short on details. It did note a couple, however. First, Latvia is not currently part of the Euro zone, but it accomplished its reforms without having to devalue its currency relative to the Euro, and frankly, I find that unbelievable. Latvia’s currency is apparently pegged to the Euro, so that in order to implement austerity without changing the peg, the country would have had to move Heaven and Earth to hold up exchange rates in the midst of the crisis. Indeed, one of the interviewees in the article itself likens the process to painting a house by moving the house rather than the paint brush. Which, I mean, maybe you can do it, but I question the wisdom of that.
The other really interesting thing in this article is the fact that Latvia’s economy is growing, but the country itself still has unemployment of around 20%. So to be fair, things might be getting better in Latvia, but I think we can all agree that they’ve got a long way to go before we can objectively call them “good”.
With that said, Spain and Greece both have unemployment in the same range as Latvia, but with little hope of implementing successful austerity, it seems likely that neither Spain nor Greece has much hope for future growth. In Latvia times are tough. But they appear to be getting better.
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Finally, I’ve been talking this over with my gaming group, The Sellswords of Luskan, and I think we’re going to give the new D&D Next ruleset playtest a try. Several of my players have played through parts of the officially published playtest adventure, so for better or worse, I’m going to have to innovate whole swaths of it, but we’re gonna give it a try, and frankly, I’m looking forward to it.
With that in mind, I’ll try to put together another set of bullet points on the playtest rules and maybe talk about our experiences a bit whenever there’s something else that’s worth saying. At this point, I’m also really looking forward to the next blast of playtest material that comes out, both so it’ll give me a chance to do something new and interesting for my players and so that we have a few more sample PCs with which to play.
And that’s all I’ve got. Hope you had a great week this week. Today’s a half-day for me, so by the time you see this, I ought to be out and into my weekend.
Have a good one.
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There. Was that positive enough for you?
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