Race Week Has Arrived

Finally, the Swim the Suck race week has arrived and with it my long lost excitement has returned. Admittedly, my training has fallen off over the last month in large part due to some declining motivation. I think, in part, the motivational issues have been related to my increase in running which has left me with little energy to attack the water as I needed to. Also, Randy Beets has been unavailable much of the time as a training partner, so I have just been floundering of late. Now, the training is done, the taper has begun, and the packing is starts soon.

Today, Monday, I ran 4.11 miles, cleaned my truck out some, and made it to the pool for what will be my longest swim of the week, not counting Saturday. I took my thermometer and guessed the water to be 75 when I waded in. I took a reading and it said 76. Later, I looked again and the temp was 75. I've gotten pretty good at being able to tell the temp by the feel and if the thermometer had said anything else, I would have thrown it away and bought another one. While there, I swam

2 X 500
10 X 100 @ 2:00
200 easy
2 X 75 @ 1:30
300 easy
Total: 2,800 meters.

Last year, I swam on Tuesday and was not in the water at all until Saturday. At the race, I didn't perform the way I thought I should have been able to. My Coach, the Mad Swimming Scientist, said I was out of the water too much. So this year I am going to swim through Thursday, maybe Friday, but a little less each day. Tomorrow I will shoot for 2,400.

Yeehaa.