We're All Human, Aren't We?

This morning was another lazy morning, and I only got up when the kids started complaining about being hungry too much. We had oatmeal with bananas and they actually ate it all! I waited a while to let my food digest, then did my hip exersizes and headed out on my run:

Run: 1 hour, steady RPE 3-4 effort. Good stretching afterwards.

It was a good run. An hour is a nice length of time for a run. It's not too long so I don't have to hold myself back too much, and it's not too short that I don't feel like it wasm't worth it. I ran on the trail by the river, and had one guy run past me. I didn't have a problem with him passing me, but then, a few minutes later, I noticed that my heart-rate had gone up to 170. I don't really think of myself as a competitive person, but sometimes when someone passes me like that, making it look so easy, I just think, "I could go a little faster." 

What makes it so that some people are so much faster than other people? And I don't mean people who work at it versus people who just sit around all day either. I mean, some people are faster than me when they're taking it easy even if I'm going as hard as I can. We're all human, why is there such a big difference? It's not like you see one cheetah that can go 70 mph, but then see another one that can barely break 20. Pete points out that this is because a cheetah that can only run 20 mph would starve to death. Maybe this explains it.

It just makes me wonder if some aliens came and watched us humans, then wrote a paper about us, would they say, "Humans can run up to 27 mph." because a few can do that? Or would they say, "Can run up to 10 mph." which seems to be more like the average. It's just so weird that we're all human, but some can go so much faster! It's crazy. Here's an article about it.

Anyway, after my run, I had a quick half sandwich and some recoverite, then Pete dropped me off at the pool so I could swim while he took the kids to lunch. Here's what I did:

Swim: 500, 5 x 100, 400, 4 x 100, 200, 2 x 100, 100

long reps are at RPE 3, 100s are at RPE 7

My 100s were all in between 1:43 and 1:55, except for the last one which I did as a cool down. It was a good swim. It always takes me a good 10-15 minutes to get feeling good in the pool. When I first jump in and start swimming, I often think, "I need to do this for how long!?" But then I get into the rhythm of it and I feel good, like I can keep going forever. Well, maybe not forever, but you know what I mean.

Again, the guy in the lane next to me was just so fast! He was cooling down and I was doing my fast 100s and I still couldn't keep up. I'm really not competitive . . . Ok, not very competitive, but what gives? I guess it probably had to do with how trim he was and how defined his muscles were. I wonder if you can see my muscles like that (well, not exactly like that, but at all) when I'm swimming. I know my arms have gotten stronger because I had to get rid of one of my shirts that had too tight of sleeves, and I did 6 pull-ups a little while ago. That beat my record of 4 from when I was in weights in high school. I haven't tried any pull-ups lately, maybe I can even do more. I'd hate to try it and not be able to do as many, though. I'll skip it tonight.