Things are getting better - swim lesson#1

So I promised you all a post yesterday and I apologize, but I had to get 4 new tires on my little 4 banger Honda last night because THIS happened when I walked out and was ready to roll on my 77 mile bike ride on Saturday afternoon. When the guy in the street said “hey buddy your tire’s flat” I instinctively looked at my bike and looked back at him confused, then he went on to say, “Isn’t that your car?” and pointed to the bright blue civic with TRI stickers PLASTERED all over the back end of it.

I’m the only kid on the block with a $4k bike and even aerobars and I know this guy was just ASSUMING that it was my car, but he was right….and correct that I had a flat tire. Some drunk @$$hole decided it would be funny to slash about 5-6 cars tires on my street on Friday evening/Saturday morning. So last night after work, I was getting new tires on my car (to the tune of $400+) rather than posting a blog entry…

Other than that, this week has been great. I’m moving away from the squirrels, the rain that POURS from my ceiling when it rains, slashed tires and parking tickets from leaving my car on the street. I’m moving into a nice complex that’s about a mile down the road from these guys…

These are my new nephews Jakob and Noah, they are 10 months old now and are cute as hell. When I was unemployed, I saw them everyday and helped out with my sister, now I get to see them like once a week and it sucks a little. They still laugh and smile when I enter a room because they know I am just there to play with them and thrown them in the air, but it takes them a little bit to recognize me now…hopefully we can get the instantaneous smile and laughter back soon.

Training wise, it has been great. I just logged a 14+ hour week and I had some MONSTER workouts. Most notably and the reason I am writing this post was the swim workout I did recently. 4 x 1km with :60 rest in between 1,000’s. I love this workout because it teaches you good pacing and endurance and I like to try and negative split the entire thing. This time with the help of coach Erin, I was able to hit some REALLY good times…here is coach Erin imbibing after a night of boozing at a friends house (it was a champagne party, so that’s why we are all classed up…)

Erin is a national level swimmer who swam all 4 years for SUNY Oswego and was a fantastic backstroker. She was an All-American her senior year and swam in high school as I did at our alma matter, Churchville Chili. Halfway thru the set, she told me to lengthen my stroke and do more “DPS” distance per stroke. I did and boy did the times go down.

This set is always done with no warm up, or cool down, just straight 4km’s in the pool. The first one ripped off in 15:09, the next was a 14:59, then Erin told me to concentrate on DPS and I initially complained, but then thought better and hit a 14:55…the next one was the shocker. After thoroughly concentrating on lengthening the stroke, I hit a 14:22 for the last 1,000. So this is it, props to coach Erin for reminding me of a valuable lesson. Listen to whomever can give you advice, lengthen the stroke and you will see dividends. This is a rest week now (so I can enjoy the late night pizza as depicted above....) so it’s nice and easy recovery for the next week before one last push of training in preparation for Muskoka in June. Keep getting those miles in. IMLP is right around the corner. Train hard folks and I’ll catch you on the flip side. Cheers.