Week 5

Week 5 has come and gone. I can not believe that I have been training for a whole 5 weeks!

This was the week of taking breaks. By the time that I had hit this week in my training I was getting too burnt out. And as Brian, in one of his fleeting moments of kindness, has told me- "The worse thing you can do is to over train." Of course from Brian this is a mixed message since he later told me - "with the training schedule you have I don't understand how you could be burnt out at this point." Ah, the joys of being young and not having to work for a living!

Any who, taking a bunch of days off was really really good. By the time that Saturday rolled around I was once again able to think about going to the gym without wincing, plus I was able to buy groceries in those off days... always a mood elevator!

Saturday was a great training day. I finally broke 3,000 meters during my practice- which was something I was building up to. Usually in a swim practice we did up to 4,500 meters easily. However, since I am doing other types of training I want to try to keep my practices between 2,800 and 4,000 meters each time. It was a good mile stone to have broken during the week that I was feeling the least into my training.

Here is how my swim practice broke down:

Warm up:
3 X 100 warm up free style, quick so as to get warmed up

4 X 100 free style kicks 20 second intervals, quick and with my new fins!
4 X 100 butterfly kick 20 second intervals, quick and with fins
4 X 100 backstroke kick 20 second intervals, quick and with fins

Pyramid:
200 m, 300 m, 400 m, 600 m.

Cool down:
2 X 100 back and free style
1 X 100 free style and butterfly

So that was my work out. Two things of note: 1. I had not worked out in fins since I was in highschool- and I had completely forgotten how much they work your quads! At the time it burned, but when I went on a ride the next day it killed! 2. Butterfly is tiring! I was never really good at it as a stroke, but used to be able to get across the pool with decent form and not too out of breath. This time I was dieing! I need to really work on that; since that is the stroke that gives you awesome abs.

Any ways that was week 5. Still feeling a bit wary of my motivation behind training these days, but slowly getting back on track.