March Aliens and the One-Armed Butterfly

Have you ever had that work-inflicted stress that causes a very localized headache pain to throb in the middle of your forehead? Like one of those slimy creatures from "Alien" could burst through your skin at any moment? I had one of those today, right around lunch time. And just as I could feel my skin parting for the alien to fly out, I went swimming and everything was all right.

I've been skimping a little on the swimming lately, so I tried to start building back up with this 1,800-yard workout:

500 yards free
500 yards one-arm fly
100 yards butterfly + 150 yards one-arm fly + 250 yards free
300 yards free

Yeah, yeah, I'm currently obsessing over the one-arm fly thing -- it's always been my favorite pseudostroke. But I rarely push myself to do so much of it. And I think it's wholly appropriate right now to emphasize the fact that I swam 100 yards full butterfly smack dab in the middle of the workout. It was rough and hurt a little bit, but I'm always looking for ways to challenge myself in the pool. Sometimes it's nice to hit that wall and need to huff and puff for a brief second before turning into the next 50 yards. Of course it's great to reach that grand swimming plateau in which you start swimming and don't ever have to stop. But it's better (for me) to find a new way to make it a real challenge. Because if Flipper isn't there, I really don't have anything or anybody pushing me, now do I?

I do, however, need something to push me in my running throughout the month of March (perhaps if someone could just run around all day chasing me with something gross, like a jar of pickles or something). For now I've started the countdown to my first run, which is one week from Saturday.

Until further notice, my target for the month of March will be three 1-hour runs each week. I don't think asking three hours of running out of myself is too much at all. Plus, it gives me a definite timeframe for running and no excuse to say, "but I probably don't have time to run x miles today!"

Perhaps I'll prorate the hours for this week: run an hour tomorrow or Saturday, and then start fresh on Sunday. That will still give me four solid weeks to run, for a total of 12 running hours in March. My non-training goal is to stop letting unimportant factors like work cause alien creatures to be rumored to be crawling out of my forehead. I have far more important things to use my energy for than fight off those guys!

Sounds inspired and doable at the same time. Unless anyone has a better idea?