If You Stole Spring, Please Return Her

It is Sunday afternoon and my wife and I just got home from church and lunch at the college with some old friends, the Rowes, who came over for a visit. It was really nice. It was really cold. If we don't get some spring soon, not only am I in danger of being dangerous, but I am getting a little antsy about the Chicot Challenge. The water temperature gap between this year and last year has now grown to twenty degrees. Twenty degrees! What's up with that?

Thursday I got in the pool at DSU as early as I could and planned to stay untill they threw me out. They did, but first I swam

1,200
5 X 200 pull with paddles @ 4:00
2 X 50 kick no fins
6 X 150 pull with paddles @ 3:00
2 X 50 kick no fins
8 X 100 swim dec 1-4 (tied PR with 1:28 2x)
end of masters practice. On my own I continued with
500 back kick/swim with fins
10 X 100 assorted paddles @ 2:00
400 small paddles


This is not a great pic,
but I only had my phone and didn't want to enter the yard.

Total: 6,000 long course meters.

This was the kind of work I need, only more often. Friday I attended the Mississippi Humanities Commission banquet in Jackson to receive my certificate and check (YES!) for being named MDCC's Humanities Teacher of the Year for 2012. It was a nice deal with VP Abraham, Dr. Barnett, Mary Ruth Brindly, and our new college president, Dr Nabors, all in attendance. I felt very honored and enjoyed myself tremendously. The celebration did, however, mean no training. After the banquet, I spent the afternoon shopping with my wife. For dinner we went to Aladdin's where we enjoyed some Greek cuisine. Before we left, we drove down old Canton Blvd and I found a side street where I had seen a stunning tree a year before. Last spring when Mom was hospitalized at St Dominic's, when she would go for physical rehab, I would take a run. On one such run, I saw this stunningly strange pine tree which had bark that looked like some sort of hardwood tree bark. I remembered that from a year ago and Penny and I found the tree and took some pics. I even knocked on the door to ask questions, but alas, no one was home. All in all, it was a nice day.

Saturday I would have loved to gone to  the pond, but it was threatening and delivered some severe weather. Before the weather went crazy, I got in a 9.4 mile run and did a huge upper body weight workout. Then I checked the ten day forecast. It doesn't look good.

Actually, training is substantially ahead of last year at this same time. However, it needs to be ahead of last year, and we are entering the time when I really need to start going crazy with distance. The outdoor water temps are just too cold for me to stay in very long, even when I wear a wetsuit. And since my access to indoor pools is so limited, I am starting to get nervous, concerned if I will be able to pull off a 16-mile swim by the first of June. Oh well, all I can do is all I can do.

For the week I
swam 14,075.32 meters
walked 6.08 and ran 14.88 miles
and lifted weights one time.

For the year I am at
147,229.19 meters swimming and
245.5 miles running.

Compared to last year I am
+27,936.42 meters swimming and
+160.83 miles running.
Yeehaa.