Time Off and March Miles

I took almost three weeks off from bootcamp. I still can't believe that's how long it took for my back to start to feel better. During that time I didn't really do too much. I still took Denver to the seawall and walked while he rode his "train."

 

 I went swimming...

I'm not the greatest swimmer, but I find that with each session in the pool I feel more confident. Last week I actually swam with my head in the water. It was slightly frightening. I had the worst time with my breathing. I'm so used to breathing through my nose with running that it was probably quite comical watching me. I watched a few videos on swimming technique and tried to do some of the things they suggested:
1) Don't constantly kick. Instead twist your body more from the hips and do one strong kick instead of a million flutter kicks. This helped me greatly with leg cramps. The first two times I went swimming I got cramps in my legs while swimming from kicking so much. This time I twisted a little more and kicked a little less and had no leg cramping. It actually made a lot of sense once I got in the water.
2) Stand at the edge of the pool and practice breathing. I felt a little silly but I also feel like it worked. I held onto the end of the pool and put my face in the water, then I went through the motions of swimming and would bring my head up on the right side. It helped with my confidence.
The worst thing about swimming with my head in the water was I started getting water in my ear. I've never had that issue before and it was quite annoying. Although keeping my head in the water did keep my goggles from fogging up so that was nice. I could see, but couldn't hear! I'll get this swim thing figured out soon enough.

I ran.

For six weeks I ran 21+ miles a week. The last three weeks I ran 5.7, 27.6 (half marathon), and 3.5. A lot of those miles were just walking too. 

My total for March was 100.23! My highest month ever. I wasn't very consistent this month. February averaged 20 miles every week (21, 21, 23, 23). In March I was all over the place (34, 31, 5, 27, 3.5). I prefer to keep it more consistent, so that's the plan for April.