9/8/2009

Kettering Rec is closed this week for its yearly cleaning so I am stuck swimming at a different pool this week. I did a fairly easy 4000 this morning and felt decent. Shoulder is a little sore but I attribute that more to a couple of days off than overuse. Now I have just a couple of short days leading up to the race.

4 days till Big Shoulders!

Saturday, September 5th

I had a great workout this morning! This was my last real intense workout before Big Shoulders. I didn't do anything super long but wanted to make the efforts very challenging. We ended up doing the following:

400 Swim
300 Kick
300 Pull
2x2000 with every fourth 100 being hard. I ended up going 23:47 and 24:16 for each 2000. I was fairly happy with these times although I would have liked the second one to be a little faster.

Going to spend the rest of today kicking back and recovering. Later.

9/4/2009

After yesterday’s fairly hard workout I backed things down today and did an easy 3500. Tomorrow will be my last long and intense workout before Big Shoulders.

Chris: You picked the wrong day to skip!

Thursday, 9/3/2009

9 days till Big Shoulders. Only a couple of big days left and then bring on the rest!

I put in a solid 5200 this morning. My shoulder and back still don’t feel great but I was able to put in a strong effort today. I iced my shoulder down real well last night and took some aspirin before swimming so that seemed to help.

I ended up doing 5x1000. The first was a warm up with some pull and kick involved. After that, we did the last four freestyle on 13:00. I tried to keep things under control and not blow myself up. I ended up going 11:58, 12:15, 12:20, 12:15. On the second and third 1000s, Chris pulled me around for the first 500, which I much appreciated.

Later.

Big Shoulders Countdown

Not long before Big Shoulders now. 12 days and counting! I have been finishing up a decent build for the race and starting to get excited. I don't feel as strong as I did last year before 25K Nationals but Big Shoulders is only 5K so hopefully I will have enough to get through it. I swam a test set of 6x500 on 6:30 and held between 5:52 and 5:58 which I was happy with and is giving me some confidence heading into the race.

I have been hearing a lot of murmurs lately about how could the water temperature in Lake Michigan could be for the race. Last temperature reading that I heard was mid 60's http://www.coastwatch.msu.edu/michigan/m54.html but apparently the temperature can fluctuate 5-10 degrees within a day or two so there is no reason to worry about what I don't have any control over.

Well that's all for now, I will check in again before the race.

Great Ohio River Swim

On Saturday I competed in the Second Annual Great Ohio River Swim Race held in Cincinnati Ohio and put on by the good folks at Cincinnati Triathlon.




I still was not feeling like I was in great form for this race as I was still working off a few extra pounds put on while in Mexico. I didn't really rest for the race and I just figured I would give it a go and see what happened.

According to the race officials the course is about 900 meters long. It is a "V" shaped course and starting on the Ohio side of the river and finishing further down river on the Ohio side.



For equipment, I went with my Team Aquaphor issue tri-shorts and a pair of clear Speedo Vanquisher goggles. And of course I used Aquaphor on my ankle(for the timing chip), neck and between my legs to avoid chaffing.

I started off very conservatively as I was unsure what role the current would play in the race. To my surprise, I got to the first buoy in second place with another swimmer just ahead of me. On the way back to shore I could feel the current playing a much bigger part in the race. I had to sight often and make a conscious effort to make sure that I would not over shoot the finish. On the way back I did not really see any other swimmers. Part of me thought that was good and that I had taken the lead but I was also concerned that I had picked a bad line and that I had missed a group. In the end I came to shore in 8:46 in first place overall. It was a great feeling as this was the first open water race I had done where I was the overall winner.


My buddy Kip also swam and he did very well with a 19th place finish. Nice job Kip!


As always I owe a big thank you to Courtney who got up early and supported me all of the way. She is the best!

Here are a few photos care of Michael E. Keating from Cincinnati.com. They are the photos posted in this blog.

COWS #2 Preview

The Columbus Open Water Swims #2 is tomorrow (7/18/2009). I have not been training much for this race as we have been in Cozumel for my brother's wedding. Congrats Chris and Dawn! Check out the picture below - very hard to train here :)

We had a great time but I did a little too much eating and not enough training. I will complete in all three events tomorrow and hopefully the extended rest period I have had will work out for me. I had about 7 days of no swimming and then 3 days in the water to get ready. All I can do is stay positive and do my best. Will update tomorrow with my results.