The Slug...

What is it about recovery week?? It's been so long since I've had a 3 week build and then a recovery week I've forgotten what an absolute slug I can feel like.

How is it that for three weeks no matter how tired I am I can get into the workout with enthusiasm and then push myself through the workout, yet as soon as recovery week comes it takes everything in me drag my sorry butt to my bike, my sneakers or the pool. Sigh.

This morning I was driving my buddy Andrew to the pool, as his Mrs. takes the car into the city. At 5:47am I called him to say I would be there in about 15 minutes or at least I tried to. My voice was all frog like and I wasn't quite awake yet, but I must have said something relatively coherent cause the frog on the other end of the phone said he'd be waiting.

As I stood in the pool getting my goggles ready I thought to myself 'Holy hannah how am I going to get this workout done??' It didn't help that I grabbed the wrong workout and instead of the 1600 m balance (read a lot of drills and not too challenging, which is good for how I felt) workout, I picked up the 1600 m endurance (read a lot of sprints and somewhat challenging, which might not be so good for how I felt) workout.

I started my warmup. Just a nice easy pace. I did 50 m and noticed that Andrew was still hovering at the pool edge. 'Uh, you going to swim today or just hang out??' Apparantly he had to watch me swim 50 m then he would be able to swim. Go figure.

Luckily he was somewhat paying attention to what I was doing because I had done two laps of kicking when I stopped, looked at him in a quizzical fashion and said, 'Was that 50 or 100 m of kicking I just did??' It was only 50. Sigh. How is it that one can lose track between 50 and 100 m??

Then it was into the sprint intervals. I gotta say, I was gasping for air. I pulled out everything I had mentally, though, and pushed myself through those intervals. Perhaps not so much on the moderate swim intervals...at least I didn't let the side stroker pass me!

There were a couple of hairy laps in there too. Literally. I was swimming back to the 'start' end when I spotted it...a floating, brown, hairy mass. Okay Suse. You know the drill. Do NOT panic. Do NOT hurl or gack. Just gage how close it will be to your body when you swim over it. Can you float over it? Will it be anywhere near your skin? Or heaven forbid, your mouth?? Do you need to walk like Jesus on the water to get away from it??

Luckily it was deep down so I could swim over it, all the while praying nothing touched me. As I swam back over it I made sure to kick hard in hopes that it would float into Andrews lane. Yes, I'm that nice. Hey, all's fair in love and hair!

Apparantly Andrew is a stronger kicker because when I got back it was floating back in my lane. EEEEEEK. Okay, one more time, kick, kick, kick. Try not to chunder! Eventually it disappeared. My hopes was that it was in a filter and not on the top of my swim cap.

Thankfully the rest of the swim was hair globule free. I don't know how I managed to finish off my swim, but I did. I felt pretty darned good afterwards too, so I was glad I pushed as hard as I could. I mentioned to Leslie, who was also swimming, that I felt so sluggish this week. She reminded me I was supposed to - it was recovery time. Huh. I'm going to have to remember that for next month!

Oh the things we forget after not having trained for six months! Ah well, I'm sure there is more to relearn, but it's all in good fun. Man do I ever love this sport!

Peace out my friends!