It continues

Today was our longest practice day since starting back up 3 weeks ago.  A 2.5 Hour Morning Session and a 3.0 Hour evening session must equal somewhere around 13 hours.  That's how it feels anyway.  It's tough to lift my arms and my lower abs are pretty much useless, still torn up from last week.  The workload in only two days has been very strenuous.  We get Wednesday morning off, not that I'll sleep in, but at least I can rebuild a bit of what has been destroyed this week alone.  We had another ab session today.  I considered sitting out of it entirely since I'm already pretty torn up.  I decided to give it a try and it wasn't too bad except for the leg lifts.  The work in the pool has been mainly annoying me, lots of long swimming, which I wouldn't mind if there were more backstrokers.  Since everybody else does freestyle, it just feels like I'm getting run over after beginning last in my lane (40 seconds after the first guy goes) and then getting passed 200 meters later by the first guy burning up the lane doing freestyle.  I actually look forward to the few sprint sets we've done.  I'm still excelling a little at the kick sets.  I'm 2nd or 3rd out of all the sprinters (10+).  I seem to have good speed but can't hold it for more than about 40 meters STILL.  I've swam a few :32 second 50 meter timed kicks lately.  That's a good place to start.  There is one guy on the team who can kick with a board in :28 seconds. I attempt to race him each time we kick, I'm zero for plenty-of-tries so far.  My backstroke feels great.  One thing I can credit Club Wolverine and Coach Mark Hill is an understanding of how my backstroke works.  I comprehend the timing, placement of my hands in the water and how to pull.  It's amazing what I've learned from him thus far.  Each day I'm in the pool I think about when I'll be able to try it all out in a meet.  I'm looking forward to some masters meets and Nationals in December.

Today the coaching staff asked for my college transcripts.  It's the first step in gaining an excemption to a NCAA rule preventing post-graduate swimmers from training with current NCAA swimmers.  I will provide my transcripts, then a letter will be requested from USA Swimming.  For now, we have to swim a separate workout from the college team, not an entirely bad thing (at times).

I'm feeling run down but very healthy.  I'm eating so much food it's ridiculous.  Somebody today dared to ask me... "why are you so hungry?"... to which I responded, "I just worked out for five and a half hours".