April 2010

I gave my shoulders a try yesterday after 3 days off almost all physical activity. The results weren't good at all. Both shoulders still hurt. They're fine out of the water (most times), but as soon as I start swimming, they're both painful. Both joints feel loose. Swimmers typically have loose joints but this seems worse than usual. I'm going to begin shoulder rehab again, a process I learned from Coach Linn at EMU. I was doing it last week and it was a bit painful so I took a break from it to let myself heal. I'm running out of time to train for Nationals.

With a big meet looming, it's just torn me apart taking time off swimming. I took Sunday/Monday/Tuesday off from almost ALL upper body physical activity. I did some stretching and ab workouts in the mean time. I feel about 90% healed and I think one more relaxing night might get me to 100% healed.

I have lots of plans for the new site, but I figured I would launch it unfinished for right now. I'm still porting in all my pictures and videos, so it's lacking some cool features for now. I've been adding swims to my database over the last few days. Exciting database features :)

I decided to try the pool tonight after a full 2 days completely off swimming. I took it easy with the arm strokes and really tried to work my legs. I was quite impressed with my kicking tonight. I was holding 1:13's kick on the 1:30. I think I'll give my arms a break like this till further notice and work my legs as much as possible. I'm a little stressed about an injury a few weeks before Short Course Nationals.

This is quite frustrating, I must have done some serious damage in there. It's difficult to lift my left arm at all and my right is still sore. I've never felt like this after a meet. I really want to train but I feel like I would be doing damage. I did do some dryland today though... it's better than nothing.

This is the first blog on the new site!
I'm excited to have made the switch.  This site framework is much easier to manage and will enable me to finally get all my times in my times database in a more streamlined manner.  This is really dorky, but I love this stuff!  The union of swimming and web technology!

Training:
Well it's obvious I didn't train or prepare for this meet well. I need to set a schedule and stick to it. I also need to just plain work harder. My work ethic in the pool is lacking in a big way.

Preparation:

I ended up getting a room in East Lansing but must have slept on my arm weird, my shoulder is pretty sore.

100 Fly - I wasn't really feeling up to it, but dove in and split a 23.45 going out but really fell apart the last 15 yards and took second to Saucedo with a 51.08. That time really wasn't that far off of last year's 50.88. I'm ok with that time.

100 Free - This was a tough one to start with, I was NOT ready to swim 100 Free. I swam a 48.0x. The race hurt and kinda ticked me off. I hit the lane line about 7 times, I just couldn't seem to get away from it when I was swimming toward the starting end. It was like there was a current against my left side. Nobody else seems to do it, so it's all in my head. The whole race was just sloppy. Pretty much everybody beat me. In my age group alone, I was second to Patrick Saucedo.

After my first restful night of sleep in a week, I woke up an hour before my alarm. I had considered not shaving down for this meet considering my recent lack of training. I was confident that any time additions this year could more likely be chalked up to training or the combined 8 hours of sleep over the past 4 days. Since I woke up early I decided to shave with all my extra time. With my new razor preference, I set a personal best time of 43 minutes!

I could write a book on how to NOT prepare for a swim meet based on the last week of my life. I've gotten so little sleep I can't even seem to count the hours... if that makes sense? Before this week I typically work an average of 16 hours a day but this week has just put that schedule to shame. I've been juggling a workload that leaves me working 30 hours at a time. I love what I do so I don't even notice it but jeez, I really feel horrible (not surprisingly). The only good news to report is that I've been in the pool each day.

50 Back
100 Back
50 Fly
100 Fly
50 Free
100 Free

Pretty simple huh! Looking forward to racing!

I had a bit of extra time today and decided to go rollerblading in New York City's Central Park! As you can imagine, here are a ton of people and challenging terrains to navigate but overall its a beautiful park.

I got to see some great street performers while I made my way through the seemingly endless sidewalks and paths. I took lots of pictures while both stationary and while blading! I got some interesting looks as I sped by while taking pictures with my large digital SLR camera.

Its a warm sunny day in NYC!

Whether you celebrate or not, I've decided that Holiday's in general are bad for all training. The sport of swimming is perhaps hit the hardest since it requires one of the highest-tech facilities. Site operators must decide there is either low demand for their buildings or perhaps they have a hard time staffing on weekends such as "Easter".