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I woke up at about 2:30 a.m. this morning and felt very awake, and then of course got the overwhelmingly awesome feeling of knowing that I still had an hour and 10 minutes left to sleep.
By the time 3:40 rolled around, though, that “awake” feeling was gone. I am exhausted. It’s a mixture of things, I think, from going off my first 7-day swim week to a heavy workload to Jeff King kicking our butts in practice every day.
I told a couple of the guys this morning that I had to do some deep soul-searching to pull myself out of bed. I just felt ridiculously tired and that, in a matter of time, my body was going to just shut down on me.
Well, it kinda quit on me today.
Jeff continued his current mission of kicking our collective butt in a new and different way every day this week. Tuesday was that kick set, Wednesday was the three 1500s, today was more about racing.
After a warm up of 10 125s of free/back, free/breast, we did eight 150s (or for me, eight 100s) of butterfly kick on our back mixed with swim. I’ve learned that I am pretty bad at butterfly kick underwater, and just as bad on my back without fins. Sometimes I’m okay with it, but most of the time I basically am drowning.
So I was having fun.
After that set, Jeff had us go down to the end of the pool for some racing. At this point my abs were being very spiteful, my body was exhausted and I was just trying to make it through practice. So when Jeff announced that we were doing five 175 sprints I just hoped to make it through.
Then my body revolted.
After I hit the first wall in that 175 my right tricep balled up. I kept swimming because, well, I wasn’t just going to stop, and as I came in on the final 25 yards it felt like the muscle was attempting to detach itself from my body.
At this point in my training I’ve learned the difference between “good” pain and “bad” pain. In other words, you’re supposed to be hurting during that kind of set, you’re supposed to be sore and you’re supposed to learn how to push through. To be honest, I was disappointed to be feeling this “bad” pain because I felt like learning to swim hard in the final 50 of a 175 would go a long way toward helping me at the back end of my 100.
But, as I said above, this was not a “good” pain. This was a warning signal sent to my head saying, ‘Hey, buddy, if you don’t slow down I’m going to slow you down.’
So I put fins on and decided to kick the rest of the set, rolling over onto my back and kicking the 175s as hard as I could. I was still getting the work in and still feeling the burn, just in my legs and not my arms.
Certainly I would have liked to push through and get that experience, but I’d rather shut it down in the upper body for one morning instead of blindly pushing through, hurting myself, and sitting out an extended period of time. When I was younger, I probably would’ve kept going and just said, ‘Screw it’ and the results probably wouldn’t have been great. I am just a tad smarter now — at least that’s what I’d like to think.
I’m ready for an off day, for sure, and I know that even though I might feel like a wimp for shutting it down I’m the type of person that’s going to go full speed every day whenever I can. I have missed just one day of training since I started and I’ve never backed down from a challenge. Today was just being smart and listening to the advice Jeff has given me to know my body and pay attention to what it’s saying.
Tomorrow I was told to bring tennis shoes and a jump rope. Can’t wait to see what’s in store…I’m sure it’ll be a nice, easy workout.
Ha.
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.
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