Cold As Ice

Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Time: 5:50 a.m.
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Short Course Yards/Meters
201 days to Olympic Trials

1600 warmup (in short course yards)

Broken 100 breast from  dive (short course meters)
(30.0 for first 50, 20 seconds rest, 33.9 for final 50 = 1:03.9

500 warmdown

This morning, the temperature gauge in my car read 38 degrees when I drove into the parking lot at the pool. Yikes! Obviously, walking from the locker room to the pool when I was dry was tough on my legs (I had a nice parka on), but it was even worse when I finished my warmup and climbed out of the pool. There were little pellets of ice on my deck shoes! That did not make it easy to put those on and walk back to the locker room about 100 yards away to put on a different suit for my broken swim.

We're experiencing a major cold spell in Phoenix. It's not unusual, but it hardly lasts this long. It started getting real cold last Wednesday, and hasn't let up yet. As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, I fear the weather for this weekend's meet will make conditions tough. I do plan to dress warmly and be as prepared as possible, but there will be a minute or so when it's just my skin versus Mother Nature in that moment when I am about to step on the blocks.

In preparing for this morning's broken swim, I wore my parka to the lane I was to swim in, and wrapped a beach towel around my legs. I only had my deck shoes to protect me from the cold deck, but not the cold air. My toes were quite cold within seconds.

I had expected to swim much faster today in my broken swim. I suppose when you consider that the swim took place at 6:45 a.m., the air was near freezing and the water near boiling (82 degrees), it wasn't bad. It doesn't concern me too much regarding this weekend, because the breakouts I did during warmup felt awesome.

To make things better, I'm on my way to get a pre-meet massage today from Tod Miller. I don't have any major muscle aches, but it'll be good to get all the tiny knots out, so my body can sail through the water with ease!