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Between taking photo's for EMU and U of M and then Northwestern and U of M, I had a chance to swim in the Canham Natatorium. After catching up with some swimmers from all three teams, I met Womens Head Coach Jim Richardson and asked his permission to train while his team warmed up. I was a little rushed to get in my typical 3,000 yards but I made it happen.

As always, the U of M Natatorium offers great view of the Summer Olympic Games Countdown Clock

The last few days my body has been in a constant pain from arm, leg and back workouts via P90X. I was uncomfortable doing pretty much everything including sitting. It was painful to walk, swim, lift anything and even buckle up. I had to reach for the belt in so much pain that it actually started reclining my seat to grab it!

I was quite excited about this one. I received a large envelope from United States Masters Swimming this afternoon. Inside were two certificates for the world records set in August 2009!

I think my ears are the only part of my body that doesn't hurt.

Tonight was "Arms and Shoulders + Abs". I'm pretty desolated from head to toe. I'm eating myself out of house and home along with sleeping like a rock. I honestly feel like I'm back in college swimming.

I imagine anybody would agree that balancing a job and two workouts a day is a challenge. I can't even fathom what adding children or other responsibilities would mean for that equation. I give anybody credit who can pull it off.

It doesn't happen often, but I had an ideal training day today. A full work day followed by a 3,100 yard workout in the pool and a one hour Plyometric (jump training) workout in the evening. I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight!

I'm showing slight improvement after a week of P90X. I did noticeably better on some exercises and slightly worse in others. It was a net gain overall considering weight and rep increases. I added additional ab workouts to the end of the ab video for good measure. Feeling tired but strong!

I had a few Short Course Yards National Rankings for Masters in the calendar year 2009!

All Rankings are for 25-29 Age Group

50 Free: 21.21 (5th Nationally)
100 Free: 46.42 (6th Nationally)
50 Back: 22.78 (1st Nationally)
100 Back: 49.84 (1st Nationally)
200 Back: 1:55.05 (5th Nationally)

After a disappointing meet, I'm back to heavy training. I decided to take one more day off P90X but didn't miss a day in the pool. Today I trained at EMU. I have to thank Coach Peter Linn for the 7,000 (I had time for 3,600) yard workout I recycled from my college days. It was a solid reminder of how difficult those college practices could be. I stepped on the scale after the 1 hour workout and yet again, I hold steady at 178.6 lbs. I find it interesting that I haven't lost any weight since I began training again. Lately I've been averaging about 1.25 workouts a day.

Today I had one of the worst meets of my life. As you can see from my previous posts, I didn't exactly have high performance expectations. However, I even amazed myself a little this morning... and not in a good way.

A crazy work week must have thrown me off a normal sleep schedule. I slept no more than 3 hours last night, but even that couldn't account for such horrible swimming compared to my recent performances.

I'm looking forward to the meet in the morning! I took Friday off as my day of rest since I was quite run down after a solid week of swimming and dryland training. Today I swam 2,300 yards at a local pool since EMU was booked with a meet.

I wish I could predict that I'll swim well tomorrow but unfortunately I'm really sore from lifting, yoga and kickboxing on top of swimming this week. I'm just hoping for some solid times for right now. I'm nowhere near as prepared as I would like to be at this point in the year, but it's ok, all in good time.