Feeling 1,000 times better

Jul
26

Feeling 1,000 times better

Posted by Kevin Doak on Sunday at: 2:13am (July 26th, 2009)
After a nap and LOTS of food, I was feeling much better. I headed to the local outdoor Fuller Pool to finish up my 4,700 meter workout I began this morning at U of M. I'm really glad I sent myself home earlier. Somehow I think my body was just low on nutrients. I made the right decision to leave and refuel.

I felt fantastic later in the day, I swam a great 3,500 meters. This workout, combined with my 1,200 this morning topped off my planned 4,700 meter practice.

Regarding my taper plans. I had a brief but educational conversation with Coach Peter Linn and Assistant Coach Sarah Volpe yesterday pertaining to my taper schedule. I self admittedly don't know much about how to plan a perfect taper so their insights helped me out quite a bit.

I've been swimming 6,000-7,000 meters a day for a few months now. My meet event distances, combined with warm up and warm down will bring me up to about 2,000 meters a day. The coach's recommendation was to decrease my practice distances 500 meters a day down to my daily meet yardage starting today. I've been doing 5,000+ meters for a week now, yesterday was 5,200 meters. Today was 4,700. I'll probably take it down to 2,500 or less before the meet starts. The theory of not tapering down past my meet yardage seems sound to me. In past meets, such as the USMS state meet, I brought my yardage down to 500 yards a day before the meet. This choice may have hurt my times. I prepared my body for 500 yards a day and within the meet, I was swimming 1,500 yards or more per day when you factor in warm up, events and warm down.

I plan on doing some speed work this week to prepare to race at IUPUI. I've been working on my breathing mechanics in butterfly and I think I might even have my biggest time drops in those events! My backstroke is feeling strong and I look forward to a solid tapered swim!

My weight is holding steady at 167 and I feel pretty lean. I put the P90X program on hold once I started tapering. I'm excited for my first Masters National Championship!