By Paul Tenorio

Diving Back In Archive

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I love chinese food. I’m not quite sure why, and really it’s become more of a curse than a blessing. About 90 days ago I started this whole thing off at 193 pounds and I can honestly say chinese food probably played a pretty big role in that.

In college, I was a frequent purchaser. That carried over to the post-college years and, alas, my girlfriend hates the stuff otherwise I’d probably still be eating it way too often.

So you can imagine how excited I was for the cold chinese breakfast buffet today.

Of course, destiny was going to ruin me. My stomach was feeling very, very subpar this morning almost immediately as soon as I woke up. I’m not sure why, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that it was because I ate…not great…this weekend. As in, one too many burgers.

For the first time in this whole experience, I legitimately felt as though I was going to throw up in the pool during the workout. Every time I finished a swim and touched the wall, the first though through my head was — ‘Don’t throw up in the pool and look like an idiot.’

You can imagine how not fun that made the swims today, and I had to kinda limit the distances I was swimming in order to not puke everywhere.

We did sets of 175 swim, 25 sprint off the block (10, I believe) and then eight 200s and I had to bring those down to about 125 swim, 25 sprint and 150 swim because of the stomach.

As bad as it was in the pool, though, the most disappointing part was not being able to absolutely pig out on the chinese food after. I was forced to limit myself to one small plate with some chicken lo mein, pork fried rice, a few pieces of beef and broccoli and two pieces of sweet and sour chicken.

That sounds like a lot, but I swear it was on a small plate.

The idea and the breakfast itself was awesome. The spread looked great and everyone was enjoying the food. It was also reunion with Katie Guida, Rebecca Burns and Colleen Sullivan who came down to join us. Katie made the trip from Tennessee and Rebecca from New York and they were able to catch up with Jeff and enjoy the food. Rebecca swam for Stratford and I hadn’t seen her in years, so it was awesome to see her again.

Next time we’ll have to get them in the pool, too!

This afternoon I also took a trip over to Sport Fair with Pat Sullivan to make some purchases. I snagged a new pair of goggles, some new fins that actually fit, a new suit, a drag suit and…a competition suit.

I spent a pretty penny, that’s for sure. But at least I’ll somewhat look the part on Saturday and Sunday at the October Open.

It’s back to work tomorrow and I’m intent on getting over this bug or whatever it is so that I’m not slowed down this week. It was not fun feeling like that this morning.

I talked a lot this afternoon with Pat about my expectations for the Open, the times I want to reach are one thing but reaching certain levels for certain reasons go beyond the time. The nervousness is definitely rising as are the competitive juices.

For the first time I heard someone else challenge me…”You better not let anyone beat you in your heat,” Pat said, and it fired me up. I’m ready to race and get the first meet experience out of the way.

Most importantly, I want to make Jeff proud. After all this work over the past 90 days, it’s a big deal to me to show him things have paid off and the attention he’s given me was worth it.

I’m not going to let him down.

Of course, it’s only Monday and I’m getting ahead of myself already. But still, we’re so close and it’s on my mind all the time. Just a few days away…

Oh, and I forgot to weigh in before practice and I definitely wasn’t weighing in post-chinese food, so I’ll try to knock the weight stuff out tomorrow. Hoping the weekend burgers don’t give me too big of a gain, but I feel like I might end up being back in the 180s and back to punishing myself with a very strict diet during this pre-Open week.

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 entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 3:37 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.