Feeling Tired Today

Our younger son's room on the 4th floor of our home. Note that we had curtains especially fitted. This room also has a very good air conditioner, which makes no noise, because it is a very good Japanese brand and the motor (which is outside the room) is separate from the blower. The glass in the doors on to the lanai is slightly tinted and is reputed to provide UV protection. This is essential here. The sun during the summer months appears to be brighter and stronger than in Hawai'i. Fortunately, the sun does not shine into the room. The afternoon sun is blocked by the building opposite.

Monday was my so-called rest day (no swimming), and Tuesday I had a relatively normal swim. Today (Wednesday) the swim went OK, but as soon as I got on my bike to return home, I just felt a lot more tired than normal. While I stayed up the whole morning, around 12:45 pm I went for what was supposed to be about a 20-min rest, but ended up sleeping about one hour. I felt fairly tired and weakish much of the afternoon. I guess at my age, it catches up with you.

On Tuesday, I first swam 4,200 meters in 1hr 22 mins, of which the last 1,000 meters was at a faster pace (about 18 mins). That was a good way to finish that phase of the workout. After a few minutes resting and a slow 100m warm-up, I raced my friend over 100m and did 1m 27s, losing by a second. We then raced a 50m and I just lost that swimming it in 40s. Total distance, 4,500 meters.

Today, I first swam 3,500 in about 1hr 10mins, but I was struggling to keep my pace towards the end. I then swam 50 meters at a time, a little slower than moderate (around 50 secs each time) with something like 20 second rests in between. That got me up to 4,050m. Then a rest, and slow warm-up then a 100m race. I had one bad turn (where I was too near the wall so I could not push off), and I did not have a lot of energy, so I only did 1m 31s. Then we raced over 50m, and that was a bit better as I did that in 40 seconds. Total distance today, 4,300 meters.

I think today I just needed to catch up a bit on sleep. I also probably haven't eaten so well these last few days, and that may have sapped my energy. Tomorrow morning, I will go to swim as usual, but we will go on a trip later in the day, and I will miss Friday's swim training.

I realize that good rest is very important. There are always many things we need to be doing, and it is easy to be constantly busy. I don't think it is just age. I remember getting very tired sometimes as a student in my early 20's. It was very tiring just trying to think what to write when starting to work on my Masters' thesis. Fortunately, I do not have too many things that have to be done very urgently, and so I will try to be a bit more laid back these days. Hope you are all getting adequate rest. We all need it.

Today I also added a couple more "video bars" in the right-hand column. The top one currently focuses on Japanese anime movies (this time Miyazaki's "Memories of Yesterday") and is all in Japanese. These clips are short reminders of the movie, which I am sure all Japanese will be very familiar with. I particularly liked this movie, and watched it over and over again when in Kona. The middle video bar focuses on swimming (this time Alexander Popov as there is some useful instructional material), and the bottom one on music (this time the Japanese artist Kitaro). Since I have also installed the Playlist music player which turns on automatically, it may be necessary to pause the sound on this unless you like listened to two things at the same time. Maybe some multi-taskers can handle this.