Reporter Paul Tenorio has come a long way from Day 1 to Day 60. From catch-up to diving on the blocks. (Photos by Jeff King/Curl-Burke)

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This morning was a tad bit rough getting out of bed. I don’t really know why but I’m thinking it might just take a few more days of this to get used to the 3:45 a.m. wake up call again.

The day in the pool itself didn’t bring too many overwhelming challenges, though I’m in a stage right now where my body hasn’t yet quite caught up to the workouts and so I’m battling through some real soreness in the pool.

What’s are the effects? Well, since I’m getting a bit tired earlier on in a workout it’s going to take more focus to make sure that I’m not losing my form just because I’m tired. As Jeff King pointed out today, when I get tired I can have a tendency at times to push my arms outwards instead of going out, anchoring and pulling.

I did feel pretty good, however, after practice when Jeff complimented me on the work I did today, not because it was anything spectacular but because he can give me the workout that everyone else is doing. He doesn’t have to walk away and alter it at all for me.

That’s a pretty big deal for me. I think back to when I first started out on a long-course pool on that first day. Everyone else did workouts, I did 20 50s of catch-up with a kick board.

I think I’ve come a long way since this whole thing started. And, it’s been 60 days, basically two months. Pretty cool. I can now actually work out with the rest of the swimmers. (Insert sarcastic clap here).

The set today was pretty good. Ten 75s to start on warm up, odd swim, evens kick.

Then we went to a set of 150, 4 25s, 200 kick. Four times. Sounds pretty simple, but it was actually a kick in the behind. The 200 kick is just plain tiring. And, as always, a little disheartening for me because I’m such a slow kicker.

I swear, if there’s one thing I hope improves over the next couple months it’s my kick. Jeff said some people have it, and some don’t. I definitely don’t have it. But damn I want to be just a bit faster at least, maybe reach Patrick Sullivan level. (That’s an inside joke to Jeff’s group. Patrick recently was upgraded by Jeff before practice from “horrible” to “bad.”)

I finished practice off with 10 25s and then five sets of this flip turn-type drill.

As I sit and type here now, I am looking at my T.V. and what shows up? A replay of the world championships. And it was the 4×100 relay. First of all it was an exciting race. Second, I got to see my buddy Matt Grevers do an awesome job in the relay. And finally, I definitely watch swimming differently now that I’m trying to learn how to do it well.

I was watching their hands, how they anchor, the breathing. They make it look so darn easy.

Tomorrow should be an interesting day for me. I’ll be out in Reston covering high school football tonight which likely means about three-and-a-half hours of sleep for me tonight before practice. That’ll be fun.

And I have a feeling Jeff’s gonna be doing some butt kicking in the morning. I don’t know why. Just a feeling. Gulp.

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.

Tags: Matt Grevers

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 2:33 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.