By Paul Tenorio

Diving Back In Archive

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I think I was a bit excited to get back into the pool this morning. I woke up at 12:30, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:10 and then finally 3:39 — one minute before my alarm — this morning. It must’ve been the fact that I missed practice yesterday.

Training started with 10 straight minutes of jump rope, and I felt pretty good doing that. It’s not something I’m unfamiliar with considering Jeff King recommended it to me as an awesome way to do dry-land cardio and I was cruising for the most part in the session, though no doubt it’s very tiring.

After finishing with the jump rope we went into a test set. To warm up it was four 100s swim, four 100s kick, four 50s swim, four 50s kick. Then we put on paddles and did eight 25s — four long and feeling the water, two up tempo and two regular swim.

I was pumped for the test set — six 100s broken down into three swim, three kick — because I felt it was going to help me learn how to push through when I was tired, which was the major problem with my poor finish to the 100 at the October Open.

We started with the kick, and in the first 100 off a push start I came in right on the nose at the number Jeff had told me to aim for. The best part of it is that Jeff set it up so that a couple of swimmers next to me were leaving five and 10 seconds behind me so that I would have to hold them off while they tried to catch me. I’ll talk more about this later.

I was feeling okay after that first 100 swim, tired, but okay going into the next kick. The toughest part of the sprint kicks is that I am so much slower than everybody so it makes it a little bit tougher. You feel like a huge wimp as you come in seeing nothing but the wake of everyone else.

The second 100 swim was a wee bit tougher, and as I struggled to push through in the final 35 or so, I know I started to move my head a bit much. That was immediately pointed out to me by Matt Murray and I went into the final 100 swim (after another 100 kick, of course) focused on keeping my head position better.

The first 25 of the first 50 I felt good, I was trying to stay long and I was focused on keeping my head still. Then I flipped and as I started back toward the second wall I could feel my triceps start to tighten and then I felt the shots of pain up the back of my arm and into the point right under my shoulder. Basically every time I reached out I felt like if I extended all the way it would rip, it was so tight, and then as I pushed down I could feel it really ball up a bit more. As I came into the wall I had to decide if I’d push through or stop and I opted to hold up — it just didn’t feel right. With the November Open two weeks away, I’m not going to be dumb enough to really mess this thing up.

I was angry about it. I don’t like feeling limited. And so even though Jeff told me to get out and go to the shower to get some hot water on it I asked to stay in finish with a hard 100 kick.

I got through the first 50 before both of my calf muscles cramped up but I decided to try to keep going — the arm kept me from swimming, my stupid legs were not going to keep me from finishing the kick. By the time I hit the third wall the balls in my legs had rolled up under my knee. It was painful. I barely got into the last wall.

As I looked up at Jeff, even through the pain, I had to laugh.

“This is comical,” I said. “Now my calves are cramped up.”

I was basically as good as a buoy, just bobbing in the pool.

I’m icing the arm down as I write this and am intent on swimming tomorrow. Jeff said when I come in I need to know how I feel and decide whether I’m going to kick my butt off or swim. I am aiming for the latter. We’ll see.

Lingering muscle injuries/whatever-the-heck-this-is are no fun.

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 Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 3:23 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.