"Eric, your underwater stroke looks amazing!"

That is what my swim coach said to me last night at practice. Like I said before, something clicked with my stroke in the last week and I've really been working on making it more permanent. She said this to me in warm up and it made my night! I swam 3400m last night and I moved up a lane as well. I was the slowest in the lane, but I moved up. The workout was a pretty good workout with lots of fast stuff at the end of long intervals and then 16x50 at the end that was pretty fast. I thought I seriously hurt my shoulder at one point, but I modified my stroke a bit and it went a way. I was also going to do the core workout, but I needed to work on some school stuff instead.

Hey, another update!

Let's see here. Monday's weigh in was 195.5 and Tuesday's was 197. I'm flirting with 200 and I don't like it. Time to get serious about this diet crap. Monday's workout at lunch was a weight lifting session followed by a 3.1 mile run around the track at work. It wasn't that bad. Tuesday morning was a swim with T3 and 3300m. It was cold and I mean C-O-L-D. There was ice on the ground. OK, not on the ground but on the wooden planks on the deck. However, the pool was toasty and warm. It's a good sign when you drive up to the outdoor pool and there is a 10m column of steam rising from the pool. Yes, 10m and not the usual meter or two that I'm used to seeing. I did something weird this morning. I jumped into the pool. Most of the time, I sit on the side and kind of procrastinate and psyche myself out before I finally lower myself in. This morning, the air was cold and the water was warm so I ran and jumped in. Man, that water felt nice this morning. The workout was good. I'm still working on engaging my lats more but I only really do it when I'm swimming. I don't feel it with paddles or when I do drills. At the end of the workout, it was me and some other guy and we were doing 4x50. I lead the first two and then he lead the third one. I gave him 5 seconds and ended up getting back to the wall about half an arm ahead of him. Needless to say, I lead the 4th one. Getting out was tough. One of the girls at swim practice had a pair of Crocs Mammoths. She loved them when getting out of the pool so I went and picked up a pair at lunch today. We'll see how they work out tomorrow night. Tonight's workout was a tempo run with Texas Iron. It was about 7 miles or so and it was OK. I don't think it was a particularly excellent workout for me but I showed up and put in the work.

New Balance mileage: 0 miles
Nike mileage: 218 miles

Weekly Update

I'm horrible about this. I try to update every day but I only end up updating on a biweekly or weekly basis. I suck at this.

Tuesday: Track workout with Texas Iron. We were suppose to do 8x200m fast, 200m easy. I think I descended pretty much each one. The first 200m was 47s or something like that and the last one was 39.1s. With the warm up and cool down, it was something like 5 miles or so.

Wednesday: I had a really good workout on Wednesday. I did a swim workout and we had to do 10x100 intervals. They weren't as tough as they were the week before but something happened. About the 7th interval or so, something clicked in my stroke. I realized what it felt like to use my lats more and how to engage them. This felt weird but it also felt like what my swim coaches have been describing to me. After a few more intervals, it started feeling right. I've been working on my catch as well with focus on not breaking my wrist as well as the action at the start of my stroke beginning with my hand moving and then my elbow doesn't move until my forearm is perpendicular with the bottom of the pool. That's a lot of words, but it is what my coaches have been teaching me. With the catch part and the lats part, something clicked and it felt great. Now, whenever I swim this way, I get tired quickly because my lats aren't used to being used this much while swimming.

Thursday, Friday: Rest days because I was lazy.

Saturday: 6 mile run in the rain and cold.

Sunday: 3300m swim with T3. Once again, I worked on my stroke and my lats got tired pretty quickly but that's a good thing.

Overall, it was a light week of training. With T-day, I got lazy and out of my routine. I swam only twice and ran only twice as well. Actually, that's the only 4 workouts that I've done this week. Eh, oh well. The weather changed in Austin this week. It got very cold, rainy, and nasty. And I liked it! It's a decent change form the heat that I'm used to. Running is more comfortable and swimming in a heated pool this morning was nice even though it was outside. I like the change and hopefully it'll stay this way for the entire winter.

Finally, my New Balance shoes have been retired and they are now my everyday shoes. I bought a new pair of the NB 1061 shoes and I have decided to not pick up another pair of Nike Air Pegasus. The NBs work a lot better for me and my physical therapist agrees with me.

New Balance mileage: 0 miles
Nike mileage: 208 miles
Weekly run mileage: 11 miles
Weekly swim distance: 6600m

Weekend of Running

I had a lot of running this weekend. Sunday was a 6 mile run around Town Lake. Nothing special but I feel like I'm running with lead legs. Yesterday was a swim with T3 in the morning. After that was a 3.1 mile run around the neighborhood. I cut the swim a bit short because I was feeling fatigued and my shoulder was hurting. Since I want to swim a lot, I need to stop the workout when I need to. Friday was a weight lifting session and then a 6 mile run around Town Lake again that afternoon. Thursday was a rest day since I was so worn out from the swim workout on Wednesday night. Oh, I was still feeling the intervals on Wednesday night even on Saturday morning. Friday's weigh in was 197 so I need to start to get more serious about that.

New Balance mileage: 209.5 miles
Nike mileage: 202 miles
Weekly run mileage: 21 miles
Weekly swim distance: 6000m

Torturous Swim Workout

I had an absolutely torturous swim workout tonight. It was a total of 3200m. It was about 1100m of various warmup sets and then it was the main set. 20x100m on an interval with about 10sec rest after each interval. First 5 were swim, next 5 were with a pull buoy, next 5 were swim again, and the last 5 were with paddles. That workout killed me and that was my first full swim workout in almost 2 months. I came home and all that I wanted to do was sleep. I was completely exhausted. I ate dinner, watched TV a bit, and then slept so hard last night. I woke up about 20 minutes ago and after 8.5 hours of sleep, I still had no clue where I was when my alarm went off. I felt like that I could probably sleep in for another 1.5 hours but that isn't going to happen because I need to go to work. I'm very happy with the workout because I was able to hold my interval for the entire workout and I felt completely exhausted at the end of it.

I went to the core workout last night as well. It was tough getting back but I'll back to normal in no time.

Update

Another long overdue update. Thursday of last week was a swim with T3. Friday was nothing because I was dealing with 2 sicks cats. Saturday was a swim. I checked at 11pm on Friday night to see what time my 9am swim was at on Saturday morning. It was at 7am. I still made it though. Sunday was a 3 mile run to recover from a hangover. Monday was another hangover recovery day. Yesterday was going to be my first 3 workout day but I got up and got ready to go swimming. Practice started at 5:45am and I wasn't ready to leave until 5:45am. I bagged it and watched Heroes from the night before instead. I did lift weights at lunch and do some run intervals with Texas Iron in the evening. I'm still a bit sore from lifting yesterday and my legs weren't happy for the run, but I'm fine now. My weigh in on Monday was 194.5 so I'm starting to feel like a chunky monkey. Man, I always hate November and December because I gain so much weight after the season is over. I also haven't looked at my training schedule since I printed it out on Halloween. I pretty much try to get 4+ swims per week, 4+ runs, and 1-2 weight lifting sessions. I need to start looking at it to keep me honest. Plus, I get lazy and I probably should be doing a few more 2-a-day workouts than I'm doing now.

New Balance mileage: 203.5 miles
Nike mileage: 193 miles

Speed is fun!

What was Tuesday's workouts? Oh, yes, a 1700m swim in the morning. Man, that was rough because it was the first before 6am workout I've had in about 6 weeks. I'm still tired from it. And I continued my dumbassedry as well. I went to the wrong pool. On M,W,F, my swim is at Courtyard in the morning and on T,TH it is at Lost Creek. On Tuesday morning, I went to Courtyard. I'm an idiot, wasted a bunch of sleep and gas. Eh, oh well. I was pretty sore from lifting weights on Monday so I didn't do that hard of a workout, but the swimming did help with the soreness. Speaking of lifting weights, I was fairly sore after Monday. My pecs, shoulders, hamstrings, glutes, and groin were sore.

I ended up doing a double workout on Tuesday and did my first workout with Texas Iron since before Longhorn. It was actually a really good workout. My legs were sore from running and lifting weights yesterday but I still pushed myself. The workout was a 15min warmup. Then, we did 3-5 1km loops that were hilly, too. I only did 3 loops since I'm just getting back into it. The pace was as fast as we could sustain for as many loops that we were doing. My 3 loops had times of 4:15, 4:09, and 4:00. I was pretty stoked about that because it felt like I was running through oatmeal on the last loop. Also, my max heart rate during all of these intervals was 183. With my max of around 190-192, this shows me that I was pushing pretty hard the entire time. Then we did a 1km cooldown and that was the workout.

Today is a rest day because I'm still sore in most places.

New Balance mileage: 200.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles

First weights lifted in 6+ months

I lifted weights for the first time in about 6 months or so. I'm a little fatigued but I took it pretty easy. My upper body is feeling fatigued from swimming this past week as well so I don't want to overtax it too much. Overtaxing it a bit is fine though. We'll see how I feel in the morning though.

This morning's weigh in was 192.5. I'm starting to work that down again. I also ran my 3.1 mile loop in 25:20 or so. Not bad. I'm not doing much LSD in running now. I just want to do some 8-10 mile distances and then work on speed. Actually, I'm just going to follow my coach's plan after I get used to running again which should be after this coming weekend.

New Balance mileage: 195.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles

2500m Today

I swam about 2500m today. Nothing special about it. I'm going to ease into it and not do a 3300m workout for the next week. I'm just doing 2000-2500m per workout, but I'm doing that 4 days this week. No run this weekend because of Halo 3, working on the house, and drinking beer. I need to get my ass in gear though. My half marathon is 3 months away and I want to go 1:30 in it as a super goal and 1:35 as a satisfied goal. I'm going to be ramping up my running this week as well as starting to lift weights too.

Also, I've decided that of all the athletic body types of females out there, I prefer the body type of a swimmer. Female runners are great if you like small boobs. Cyclists are great if you want nice legs and gnarly scars. However, swimmers can be athletic and muscular but still have some curves and softness to them. That's all that I have to say about that.

I'm working out liike a sane person

I've been working out like a sane person lately. Tuesday and Wednesday morning were 3.1 mile runs. Both were fine. Nothing wrong with them and they both were in the mornings with the cool 55* air that is fantastic to run in. Thursday night was a swim with T3. It was my first swim and I put in 2150m that night. I was a bit rusty at first but my stroke was coming back at the end. The cool thing was that we were suppose to do a 200m swim pretty much as fast as we could go. After being off of swimming for about a month, I was still able to do 200m in 3:01. That is a pace of 1:22/100yds which I'm quite happy with. Not much else is going on. I'm busy on the weekends playing Halo, watching TV, and working on the house. My plan is to get a 6 mile run and a swim in this weekend but we'll see how that goes. I'm going to start lifting weights next week as well.

New Balance mileage: 192.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles