Merry Christmas! Week 6 Training Summary

I hope all of you reading this had a great Christmas! It was great getting to spend time with family and friends. I also hope Santa was good to all of you, maybe bringing you some new training devices for he 2010 triathlon season. Jen got me a set of swim paddles to use in the pool while training and I also got a Finis Tech Toc from my parents. I'm excited to try it out. It is a device worn in the pool to measure hip rotation while swimming. The week was very up and down for me. I began with a plan to run every other day. My achilles seems to swell up about 5 hours after running but it gets better quickly with rest. I was able to get 26 running miles in this week with my first interval workout of the year on Wednesday over at Augustana's indoor track and also got my first long run on Sunday. It was a great help to have friend Stephan Marsh home from law school break. We did a lot of swimming and running together. In addition to the running, I also swam 19,400 yards, biked 70 miles, lifted weights 3 times, did speed drills and strides three times, lunges and plyometrics twice, and core work 5 times. On Thursday I swam a 6,500 yard practice with the PV High School team. That was my most yards in a practice in as long as I can remember. I continue to feel stronger in the water every week. The week was looking to be a really big volume week until Christmas night when I got the stomach flu for the 2nd straight year on Christmas! I'm not sure why Santa punishes me with this. This is the 4th time over the past 8 years I've gotten this sickness over the holiday season. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy! It forced me to miss a swim workout on Saturday and a lot of bike time over the weekend. I'm looking forward to getting this out of my system soon! My favorite workout of the week was without a doubt the track workout at Augustana. It felt great to be back on the track for intervals. I warmed up 2.5 miles and then did 8x800's with 90 seconds rest between each. My target time set by Augie Coach Ron Standley was 2:50. I ran 2:45, 2:46, 2:44, 2:44, 2:37, 2:37, 2:35, and 2:28. It didn't feel tough at all until the last few. I lost 3 lbs. last week and I can tell the body fat that I've lost has given me a boost running despite not being able to run near the mileage I would like to. My total workout time for the week was 17 hours. I hope to be recovered from this illness and get a 20 hour week in this week. Merry Christmas! Enjoy the New Year! Thanks for reading...DREAM BIG!