Thursday's swim--October 9th & eye disco

Warmup (400m): 100 swim, 100 kick, 100 pull, 100 swim
Minispeed (500m): 4x [25 easy, 25 fast, 25 easy, 50 fast], IM order, full stroke, with fins, except breaststroke.
Aerobic (1200m): 6x200m freestyle on 3:45*
Recovery (300m): 3x100 (50 kick/ 50 full stroke); back, breast, free.
Warmdown (200m): easy
===2600m

*I kept pace on 3:45--the first two came in at 3:23, then 3:24, 3:27, 3:28 and 3:30.


The eye thing.
About an hour after time trials back at the end of July, I had a funny strobey light thread pulsing in my field of vision, like disco-vision. After mayoclinic.com-ing myself that night, I was sure I had a detached retina. Lucky for me, Dr. Louie pronounced my retinas healthy, but suspected a "visual migraine." It didn't happen again until last Wednesday . . . when I thought I'd better check it out again, just in case. I mean, if it wasn't something scary that requires surgery, well, great. But if it was . . . I'd rather know and move on. Anyway, everything checked out okay, and the funny strobey threads happened again tonight. Again, about an hour after the swim, and lasting about 25 minutes.

So here's what I found about the visual migraine. There is a fantastic animation that shows pretty much what enters my vision, except that mine is distinctly black and white, not colour. CMAJ has a teaching case report about it. Mayo describes a migraine with aura, but I don't actually get a headache with it. The description that makes the most sense to me is that it's like a vascular "charlie-horse," or vasospasm. I prefer to think that this is happening, than something nasty right in my eye. I'm curious as to whether there's any relationship to the type of workout and occurrence of this. I'll keep my eye on it, so to speak.