Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Your Little Body's Slowly Breaking Down

Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Time: 4:45 p.m.
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Long Course Meters
75 days to Olympic Trials

I will not writing very much tonight. My fingers are too tired to express many of the thoughts in my head tonight. My entire body will be in knots tomorrow. Part of that is exacerbated by the fact that I stayed at the pool for an hour after workout to talk with Coley Stickels, instead of going home to replenish my fuel stores that were completely empty. Ideally, you want to have something almost right after swimming (chocolate milk has become the trend), and a good meal within the hour after swimming. It's now two hours after workout ended, and I'm now about to have some real food.

Today's workout with the kids at Phoenix Swim Club was tough, one of the toughest lactate workouts I've done in many, many years. It was 80 minutes of sprinting, from start to finish. I am not kidding. Even the first "warm-up" set of a 400 had 100 meters of sprinting in it! And after that, it was fast swimming on everything. Most of it was just to make the interval, but the "main" lactate set was the killer. I tried to have good stroke rates on everything, but I felt like my arms were moving at 200 speed.

Coley said afterwards that he had to adjust the workout a little, because the pool was supposed to be short course yards, and we started about 15 minutes late. But I don't think he adjusted it enough! Doing 50s on 50 seconds long course is tough, and even tougher when you're trying to swim 35 meters without breathing.

I'm not usually a glutton for punishment, but I'm going to swim with the kids tomorrow. I've never done two of Coley's workouts in a row, but now's the time to get my muscles broken down and train them to know how to get to that high lactate production level, and still swim efficiently. The key, though -- and this is why today was so hard -- is getting plenty of rest in between each lactate set. We only got about three minutes rest, which is barely enough for people my age to catch their breath and go again. But I am happy I did the workout.

OK, my fingers were able to get out all my thoughts. I hope there's enough energy in me to eat a plate of pork chops and broccoli, and to turn on the TV to watch a new episode of "Modern Family."

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