Uncategorized

While the travel team is out of town in Buffalo, NY and Akron, OH I was asked a few weeks ago to fill in coaching the swimmers who chose to continue training. Its honestly some of the first coaching experience I've ever had an opportunity to partake in.

I'd like to share an ironic situation I feel as I stand on the deck of the Michael H. Jones Natatorium. For years, like everybody else who has swam for EMU, I was instilled with an overwhelming respect for Coach Mike Jones.

Although it was expected from people close to the situation, I'm saddened to report that the Father of EMU swimming, Coach Mike Jones has passed away. I've been told he was with his family during his transition and he felt no pain.

I had a chance to get in before attending the EMU meet this past Saturday. After a brief warmup, I joined a current EMU swimmer during a set of 4x75's on the 6:00. I'm was fairly proud of my times. I held :38's on each one of them. Certainly not stellar, but I felt it was a good point to be at. I stepped on the scale after practice and saw an alarming 179.4lbs... getting dangerously close to that nice round 180 number!

I'm hoping to step up my dryland training this week and get on a more normal training schedule.

A work conflict will keep me from going to the TYR Grand Prix meet in Indianapolis this weekend. I still think it's unfortunate that they would need to schedule a meet on Halloween. I just feel as though lots of swimmers have kids and wouldn't want to miss their son or daughters fun evening. For the sake of the organizers, I hope it's well attended, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it wasn't.

It wasn't until tonight that I realized that the TYR Grand Prix SCM meet was this weekend in Indianapolis. It didn't even cross my mind since its halloween weekend as well. Sort of odd that they would schedule it during a pseudo "holiday". I'm 50/50 on whether I'll attend. Not that I have any crazy weekend halloween plans, but I'm certainly not prepared to race. The 4+ hour drive makes the whole process a little less appealing. I do always have a great time in Indianapolis though, I would gladly go back!

I had a chance to hop in with EMU on Friday and swam for an hour and a half. Unfortunately had to get out early for an appointment, I would have loved to stay in for the sprint set they were doing. Today I woke up early to join their Saturday morning practice. It was around 5,000 yards followed by 4x100's MAX on the 12:00. The team was relieved to see 4x100's instead of the typical 6x100's!

I've decided to attend both the West Bloomfield and TYR Grand Prix at IUPUI in Indianapolis next month. I've been to the IUPUI meet the last two years and always seem to swim pretty well there. The West Bloomfield meet has just never worked with my schedule but I'm hoping to attend this year.

I arose extra early today to partake in my first morning practice in a very long time. Lately my 7:30pm-9:00pm schedule isn't working as well as I had hoped and I need to switch it up. Today's practice put a big smile on my face for a few reasons. I took my time swimming my workout, usually I'm rushed to just get in some yardage before I get back to work. With a wide open morning schedule, I was relaxed and swam at my own pace. I worked on speed kicking, pulling and vertical kicking.

Just been slammed with work lately. I got in the pool on Saturday at EMU before their Intersquad meet and swam a brief workout. I stuck around for the entire meet and took about 1,700 pictures for the team website I run. I received a very nice email from one of the parents thanking me for my hard work I contribute to EMUswim.com. I will keep her name private, but I hope she doesn't mind me sharing her heartfelt words here:

I was disappointed to drive all the way to the pool for my evening swim tonight to find it closed for a high school meet. Missed another day this week. I need to plan my workouts much better.

I woke up from a nap this evening with some severe knee pain. I know for a FACT that I didn't hit it in any way recently. As I'm writing this I'm remembering that during work today I remained in a squated stance for a few minutes on end multiple times. Its hard for me to believe something so small could cause this much discomfort but there's nothing else to blame it on.