What a week! I started the week with high goals of increasing my volume since I don't have to work this week. I was hoping to hit 50 miles running, 100 biking, and 15,000 yards swimming. I began the week well but on Christmas Eve I was given an early present with a stomache flu. After many trips to the bathroom on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I finally felt it was subsiding. It forced me to cancel workouts on Wednesday night and take my first full day off training on Thursday. It wasn't the Christmas present I was hoping to give myself in a week I planned to train a lot...
I was able to rebound and put in a lot of hours on Friday and Saturday. I finished off Sunday with my long run of 70 minutes and a 25 mile trainer ride to reach my weekly goals. I ended with 50 miles running, 100 biking, and 15,100 yards swimming. In addition I lifted weights three times, did running drills and strides 3 times, lunges and plyometrics twice each and core work 5 times. My total training time this week was 22 hours. I also lost more weight and was 164 lbs. this morning. That put me -18 in my 8 weeks of training. The weight has come off much faster than I anticipated. This is the lightest I've been since April of 06'.
My favorite workout this week was a swim workout I completed with my summer training partner Stephen Marsh, who is home for break from law school. It wasn't a huge workout but the hard set was 3x (2x100's on 1:40 with a 200 pull recovery). I pushed them hard and my 100 times were 1:12, 1:13, 1:12, 1:13, 1:11, 1:10. This was much faster than I ever could have swam in the past and it left me knowing that my swimming is getting much better than it has ever been. That was one of my big goals for the year. I know if I want to place among the top amateurs to earn a professional license I have to get better in the swim and this workout made me realize it is happening. After this week I will have swam more yards than I did all of last year. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We did at the Paul household. Payton was spoiled by grandparents of course...Thanks for reading. DREAM BIG!
