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After some rain during my drive, I arrived in East Lansing and the weather was flawless! There wasn't a cloud in the sky, it was amazing timing. I got in a quick warmup while catching up with some old friends and fellow swimmers. The meet was hand timed so who knows how accurate the results are.

I'm up early and headed to the MSU Munley Memorial Long Course Meet. Because of my work schedule I only got 4 hours of sleep. I feel the slightest bit shakey this morning, probably from lack of sleep and food. I have a few bananas with me for the 1 hour drive to East Lansing.

It looks a little overcast at this point so I'm hoping its done raining (this is an outdoor meet).

I just jumped in for 10 minutes today to loosen up for the meet tomorrow:

200 swim
200 Kick (front, back, right side, left side)
200 speed play (burst swimming)

And I finished up with a single start and a butterfly breakout. My start felt great so I left it alone.

I haven' t had time to look at the order of events but I'm hoping to swim:

50 Free
50 Fly
100 Free
100 Back
50 Back

I had a strong practice yesterday despite being quite tired from rollerblading. After a 2,000 meter kicking set, or main set was only 1,000 meters for the sprint group comprised of 5 other U of M men and women.

2 rounds:

5 x [50 Easy + 50 Fast] @ 1:00 (Descend +1 to -1 of 200 pace)
1:00 rest between rounds

I made it a very early morning and got a jump start on my day. I finished work early which left me some time to go rollerblading in the sunshine. I probably saw a total of 10 people out on the paths, it was nice and quiet! I barely pushed it while rollerblading, I think a rough week at practice combined with a short night of sleep equaled zero motivation to skate fast. I was enjoying the scenery and the families out walking etc.

Yesterday at practice, after drinking a gross amount of water, I weighed in at 167.4 lbs! An adult alltime low. I literally laughed at the scale.

I've filled today with quite a few activities. I woke up, worked, decided to get some sun while swimming at Fuller Pool. Today I just felt like cruising. I literally did zero hard swimming. I did some slow backstroke and moderate kicking and most likely got in about 1500 meters in 1.5 hours in the water! I ran into my friend Rodolpho Palma, the coach of Ann Arbor Masters. We caught up for a few minutes before he began training. Rodolpho has always been a fantastic resource for swim training and all things athletic.

I'm making incredible progress :)

I ran to swim practice again. I find I have much slower times when I start my practice like this. Today we swam:

8 rounds:

100 drill on 2:00
100 kick on 2:15
100 MAX on 2:00

I did 4 rounds backstroke and held 1:10 on each one. Then switched to freestyle and was a rock solid 1:03 on each one. As usual, I expected more but it was all I had. I've learned I'm just a meet swimmer, no matter how fast I train, I'll never be much of a practice swimmer and I'm ok with that. I can almost always rev it up for competitions.

The lastest ruling by FINA (The international governing body of swimming) has readopted the recently illegal suits as legal. All 198 banned suits have been added to the approved list of 202 suits (basically all suits legal before 2008). USA Swimming released a statement that it was disapointed with the FINA ruling and will push for stricter regulations on competition suits.

Here are a few good articles:

Commentary on how Tech suits have impacted summer league swimming

I woke up and began "Phase 2" of the P90X program. Today was "Chest, Biceps and Triceps. It was solid amount of pushups, curls, seated dips and chest fly's. I finally found a piece of this workout system I am absolutely incapable of achieving on any level. The 1 arm pushup. I tried many times. I CAN NOT do a single 1 arm pushup.