More Review

There are 90 days until my 70.3 in Oceanside.  This past week in training accurately reflected the year:  milestones met and obstacles encountered.  On Tuesday, I swam 2000 meters (first time ever) in 1:07, which is only 3 minutes under the time cutoff for Oceanside.  On Friday, I swam it in 1:02.  This was very encouraging, since it was the first time ever I swam sub 50-minute miles!  For most of the swim I had AWOLNation's song, Sail, playing in my head, and I was surprised at how quickly the second half of the swim went by.  I had planned to do my long run afterward, but coming out of the shower, I tripped and sliced my toe on a broken glass jar some jackass left in the shower.  I started bleeding pretty badly and a nice woman went for help.  As I was trying to figure out what had sliced me, I cut my finger!  They administered first aid and closed the showers, and I had to fill out an incident report. It turned out to be difficult to walk on the toe, so I bagged the run and went home and called it a day.  Yesterday, it hurt too much to run on it before work, and it did not appear to be healed enough to swim, so I ended up not training.  We'll see what today brings.  I am grateful to myself that I completed bike and run hill repeats earlier this week, as well as a bike sprint session.  I have yet to complete my long run and bike.  I did run for .4 miles after my bike on Thursday, which felt a little yucky, but then again, I've been pretty sore this week after not doing much most of December...

Ontri allows you to run reports on various time periods, so here are the training totals for this year, July-December:

• Swim:  26.14 miles, 26:43 hours; starting pace:  67-minute miles, current pace 50-minute miles;
• Bike:  758.48 miles, 47.20 hours; pace:  unchanged;
• Run:  229.89 miles, 53:02 hours; pace in 02/11:  16:38-min miles, recent pace 12-min miles.

I'm not including January-June, when I logged many more running miles, as I kept track of them only on paper.  But it is encouraging to see progress over time, and my attitude about swimming has improved significantly this week knowing that I'll likely make the swim cutoff in Oceanside.  Also, I don't have to stop every lap or two to catch my breath.  I've begun incorporating a length of breaststroke every 5 laps (down from every 3 laps a month ago) in order to catch my breath, which seems to help.  I initially started doing it to help with sighting and to prepare for the Palm Springs race, in case I had another panic attack and had to do breaststroke the entire time.  But now, it just seems like a good idea.

It has been nice being home with Will and the kids more this week, and I am dreading, just a little bit, my return to work, as we are headed into the second busy season of the school year.  It will be challenging to fit training in, but essential.  I am committed.  Hopefully the obstacles will be few and far between.  Happy New Year!