By Paul Tenorio

Diving Back In Archive

Follow Paul Tenorio on Twitter

Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.

This was the first morning where I felt like my lack of sleep finally caught up to me. Knowing that I had only slept three hours the night before, I woke up at 6:50 struggling to get out of bed even though I knew if I didn’t get up and out I would be late to Redskins Park for the second day of training camp.

I mean, 6:50 was already categorized as oversleeping — especially if I had wanted to hit the gym for some dry-land.

Problem is, I had to sleep. I just had to. And so when I finally got out of bed I tried to pull myself together for a full work day.

I felt more sore this morning than I have  since this project started almost two weeks ago. I don’t know if it was because I had sprinted the day before, if my adrenaline had been kicking during the “races” or what. But all day long my hamstrings have been tight and my shoulders a little tense.

I’m going to try to hit the pool tomorrow at some point, probably after training camp when I head to my parents’ house in Alexandria. I’m going to dig for some old ribbons that I saved from my Stratford Landing days and see what some of my old times were. Of course, I’ll share those here.

I had an extended conversation with Curl-Burke Coach Jeff King on my way home yesterday and we talked about how I had done and, generally, about the dynamics of the sport. It was good to get some feedback from him. One of our major topics of discussion was the support I’ve received as this project continues.

Not only have I had several emails sent to me encouraging me or eliciting some information about the project/workouts, but I’ve seen and read all of your comments and I’ve even been encouraged my co-workers and family. My little brother, John Thomas, even posted on here yesterday during his pre-high school football training camp vacation in Michigan.

It was nice to see a comment from Mrs. P, the mother of my aformentioned best friend and roommate, Greg Prunchak, who has known me since I was a 5th grader at Stratford Elementary. She said in her comment, as did MLT, that she has been inspired to get back into the gym and that’s such a cool part of this project. My own mom has been hitting the gym hard since I started this, my friend Dave Scarangella continues his own weight-loss/5K battle, and several other e-mailers and commenters have shared that they are using, or want to use, this project as an inspiration or guide to their own workout goals.

This is something I had hoped for when this whole thing launched. I say to all of you: Keep it up, keeping working hard and keep posting! Trust me, your comments drive me!

I don’t have a workout to summarize for you today. My trip to the gym won’t come until I get home from Redskins Park. My plan is to skip the gym and do a four-mile run with some resistance stretch cord training afterwards and a good chunk of time reserved for stretching.

Also, know that posting the picture of me working in the Redskins Media Room means that I will be and have been teased mercilessly by all of the other hacks in this room. Jason Reid, Barry Svrluga, Mike Wise and Rick Maese are going to needle me forever. The things I do for this blog.

Sorry for the shorter post, I promise I’ll have more for you on Monday. For now, I’m going to focus on some Redskins writing and a soccer feature story this weekend.

By the way, a shortened version of yesterday’s blog was in the paper on Page 2 of the Sports section, so check it out if you haven’t seen it already.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Diving Back In. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.