9/9/2009

3 days till Big Shoulders. Did an easy 2600 this morning. Planning on another easy day tomorrow and then Court and I are off to Chicago.

Psych Sheets have been posted for the race, take a look.

Big Shoulders History

Here is a link from the Big Shoulders website. It provides some interesting history of the race.

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.