Two Weeks

Once again I have been offline far longer than I intended. There was a bunch of stuff I wanted to write, but my computer has the flu and is in the hospital. Now, I am on my wife’s laptop, and it is about as easy to borrow anything of hers as it is to get through the Wal-Mart Express Lane without waiting behind someone with a full buggy. Several people that is.

For the week of 5/5-5/11, I swam 22,518 meters, ran 9.82, and walked 4.85 miles. I don’t know what happened to my running motivation, but it just deserted me. My swim totals were pretty decent, but I lacked the long swim that I need. My longest water-work of the week was a 5,100 meter pool session. This is just starting to knock on the edge of endurance.

For the week of 5/12-5/18, I only swam17,826.3 meters, ran a mere 4.96 miles. My swimming numbers were low because I got run out of the pool once, due to lightning, and prevented from swimming the very next day for the same reason. I got in a couple of decent swims but they still left a bit to be desired. Thursday I swam 5,400 as

2,500

10 X 50 @ 1:15

600 small paddles

10 X 150 @ 3:15 with a floating hard 50

300 with fins.

Friday I went to the pond and the water temp had dropped all the way to 70. For me that’s barely doable. I only swam a little over one lap (1126.3 meters) and decided I didn’t want to be there anymore.

Saturday morning, my son and wife, and I met our daughter at Bear Pen Park in Cleveland, MS where we (wife excluded) ran a 5K. That afternoon after the lifeguards left and the kids were getting out, I went to Twin Rivers and swam

3,000

14 X 50 @ 1:14

800 small paddles

8 X 200 @ 4:25 with a hard floating 25

4 X 100 @ 2:20

Total: 6,500.

I wanted to do more, but I decided to play it safe and stop there. Now I have two weeks to develop 17 mile endurance. Two weeks. To put even more pressure on, Bob Darden of the Greenwood Commonwealth called and ran a story on the front page of Sunday’s paper. There is no hiding now. He started the conversation by apologizing for not covering last year’s Chicot Challenge. I appreciate him doing that, and I didn’t even ask him for a reason. Darden’s piece was pretty good, but he misquoted me at a crucial point. He wrote, “My training is going so well.” What I actually said was, “My training is not going so well.” There is a big difference.

Saturday’s swim did a lot to rebuild my confidence. I think my body is sound now which leads me to believe I can still pull this off if I can get in a big pool swim Monday, and a big pond swim Friday. The following week I need more than big swims. I need monster swims. I may even cut the taper from two weeks down to ten days.