Five PRs

My last post ended with the week of 2/17-2/23. Lately I've had trouble keeping up. I hope that changes starting with today. Being off work next week, one thing I hope to do is revise and post some of the narratives I've written in the past. I'm thinking I'll do more of that in the future. Now, I just need to bring the training log up to date.

For the week of 2/24-3/2, I

swam 10,916.0 meters,
ran 10.67 miles,
lifted weights none, and
walked .81 miles.

Not much training, as you can see, but I'm still coming back from a pretty substantial injury. Nevertheless, my motivation has been lagging a bit. I don't know what is wrong.

I did have one really interesting swim that week. Our coach told us ahead of time that he would be out Thursday, February 28th. He assured us that someone would be there to coach us. Usually, however, when the coach is out I opt to do my own thing. When the cat's away as they say. So I got to looking through my swim records and noticed two things: I noticed that some of my PRs were set in 2010. I'm thinking anything I did in 2010 (in water, not on land) I can beat. My 2010 times were the 1,800 and the 600. I also noticed a couple of blanks. I didn't even have a 250 or 150 time. Once, I remember mentioning this to Cagri thinking he would write those distances into our practices. Instead, he told me I didn't need to have a time at those distances. "It's enough," he told me, "to know what you should swim because you have a 100 and a 400 time."

Well color me crazy, but what in the heck does need have to do with anything I do outside of my job? I swim because I want to (well, maybe there is an inner need), I run because I want to, I eat ice-cream because I want to. Nobody needs ice-cream. Need has nothing to do with most of what I occupy myself with. Why should it?

To make a short story long, that Thursday I did a 1,000 warm up and then swam 1,800 for time. My old record was 31:40. My record now is 27:15. After swimming an easy 200, it was time to go for my 600 PR. The old record was 9:44. I knocked this one off in 8:55. I swam another easy 200, drank some water, and reset my watch. It was then time for an assault on the 250. Actually, since I didn't have a time for that distance, I was guaranteed a PR. Still, I swam it as hard as I could and set my mark at 3:41. Another gentle 200 had me ready for an all out 150 which I did in 2:10. While I swam the 200 recovery, I hatched upon the idea of doing a 125 and a 75. For reasons I can't explain, I somehow forgot the 125 and swam 75 instead. Not only that, but when I swam the 75 I didn't start my watch so I had to do it over. I set that mark at 1:03.

All in all, five PRs in one night is not bad for a fifty-seven year old man.