Wednesday: Double Swim and Gilad

Oooh, Friends. I am back at it. I am training without a race, aimlessly and foolishly. For instance, today, I headed into swim and swam a pretty hard workout with Steven (my morning swim coach). Nick was there, and before I go any further: a word about Nick. Nick is incredibly congenial and pleasant, but he is sort of my swim nemesis. Whenever we swim t-30's (timed 30 minute swims) we swim neck and neck and battle it out, passing each other back and forth. Then when I was WAY overtraining for the Boston Marathon, Nick and I swam a timed mile and he beat me by a pool length. It was demoralizing on several levels, and I came home and decided I had to revamp my situation.

I met with a coach and revamped my workout situation, and became more rested. After Boston, I was a little slow in the pool, but I have been coming back and I am swimming hard. Anyway, on Friday and today I was beating Nick in the pool. Today, however, he told me that he had been sick with some sort of tick illness for the past few weeks. I have clearly not really been beating Nick, and I feel a little deflated.

Anyway, workout as follows:

• 100 warmup
• 4 x 50 kick
• 4 x 75 fly kick on your back no fins (misery)
• 400 pull
• 3 x 100 breast stroke kick (surprisingly hard on the shins)
• 200 kick with fins
• 4 x 50 drill/swim
• 4 x 100 descend
• 2 x 200 freestyle
• 8 x 50 IM
• 200 kick

So this was 3100 meters. Ivan had a little melt down when I picked him up from the nursery, which was solved when a fabulous gym employee donated two "peepops" (lollypops) to my cause.

At home, I got in a Gilad workout and then embarked on the days greatest challenge: a complete reorganization of my closet. I sealed all my wool and cashmere sweaters into plastic bins where they will rest until next fall. I pulled out all items that need to be altered or fixed and all items that need to be dry cleaned.

Once this was completed, I got ready to go back to swim for evening swim. Oh yes, sports fans, summer craziness is descending on me, and I was totally excited to go back to evening swim. Our workout was pretty simple:

• 800 warmup
• 800 swim practicing sighting
• 2 x 400 pull with paddles
• 8 x 100 practicing drafting and taking turns leading

For whatever reason, I got totally aggressive with my paddles and was fighting to pass people in our 25 meter lane. I knocked someone's paddle off, and I swear you would have thought that it was some sort of Olympic event. Really, it was just a lane full of triathletes who have to swim together, because we don't really swim well enough to swim with the master's swimmers. I don't know what gets into me.

Tomorrow, I am making a second attempt at Pure Barre.