3 Week Fitness Report

Well, I made it thru a month of getting ready for this trade show and now I'm sitting in my 10th floor room of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada having finally managed to grab a moment for myself. This city is INSANE. I'm going to write more about it in subsequent posts but I thought I'd catch you up on the fitness front over the past three weeks:

The Good
Despite my CRAZY work schedule of trying to get two catalogs designed, laid out and printed and designing and printing about 300 ft. of giant murals, I managed to run and swim for almost all of my planned workouts. I did miss two swims and one early morning run but for the most part I held it together...enough that I felt good about getting it done and not slacking. There was a morning run in there where I felt like several of the snowbanks looked quite cozy and I wanted to curl up in them...but the urge passed.

Better
I managed to NOT get sick thru all the lack of sleep and sick people around me. It was touch and go for a day or two but gallons of juice and water combined with one whole weekend of rest did the trick. And, I've started to wade thru Going Long and I'm excited and a little afraid to take inventory of where I am and make a plan for where I want to go. It's up to me to make it happen and I feel pretty psyched to get there. Now that work will calm down, it's time to really focus.

Best
US Masters swimming does what's called an Annual Postal Swim where you swim for 60 minutes and someone counts lengths for you and records your 50 yard splits and then you mail in your times and get to see how you stack up to other masters swimmers across the country. I knew I was going to do it this year but the rules say you have to swim during the month of January. With my trip to Vegas, I had run out of weekends and had sort of resolved that I would just do it on my own and not "officially" send it in since I wouldn't be able to get it done in time...but I could still compare my times. Well, I totally lucked out because last Thursday only 5 of us showed up to swimming so coach offered to take my splits for me while she ran practice for the other 4 folks...see, she's an unbelievable multi-tasker. So I swam freestyle for a WHOLE HOUR without stopping. It was a really good experience for several reasons...here are the highlights:
1.) I learned I could do it and by pacing myself, I did it pretty comfortably.
2.) I swam 3300 yards in an hour which is almost two miles...so that puts my half iron swim time well under an hour...much better than I expected.
3.) My first 1500 yd. swim last year was 27:45 and both of my 1500 yd. marks (1500 and 3000) were under 27:30.
4.) I held a very steady pace thru the whole hour...started at about 0:52/50yds. and didn't waver more than 3 or 4 seconds/50yards. It felt really solid.

Onward and upward....