Week 4 Training Summary...Paying the Price

Week 4 was a very solid week of training despite not running much due to some achilles tendon soreness. I didn't run Monday through Thursday to let the achilles heal and then ran Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It's something pretty weird because it doesn't hurt at all while I'm running but afterwards it swells up. Going up onto my toes doesn't cause any pain but when I come back down I get a pretty intense burning sensation in the achilles. I'm seeing Dr. Kaminski from Kaminski Pain and Performance Care tomorrow and hopefully he'll be able to work his magic on it. I used the time I missed running to swim extra yards and bike extra miles. For the week my total training time was right at 18 hours. I ran 15 miles, biked 120 miles, and swam 18,500 yards. This was my highest swimming yardage for a week since the summer months when I had a couple of 20,000 yard weeks. I'm feeling really good about the swimming. It's been a big help to train with the PV High School swim team a couple days a week and the Stingrays Club team once a week. My best workout of the week was a 5,500 yard swim practice with our high school team on Saturday. I'm really working on fixing a couple of technique flaws in my stroke and I'm seeing improvements over the times I was swimming in workouts a year ago. For the week I also lifted weights three times, did speed drills and strides twice, lunges three times, plyometrics once, and core work 7 times. I'm really starting to feel like I'm losing body fat. I used a belt loop that had never been used on Friday. I believe if I can hit my goal of reducing my body fat % from 13 last year to 9 this year I will see tremendous improvements in my performances. I've continued avoiding junk in my diet and it is much easier now that I'm feeling the results from it. I've began to think a lot lately about the price that athletes have to be willing to pay if they want to reach high goals. The workout time I spend is a high price to pay, the soreness of the swim workouts...avoiding the junk that sits around at the holidays...especially in our teacher's lounge. I believe I am paying a price for greatness right now and I am very confident it will be well worth it come summer when the races begin. I'm dreaming about success at the pro level. I know the price I pay in training day in and day out will make a difference. Thanks for reading. DREAM BIG!