Do What now?

This week my coach, Dr. Michael McMahon gave me the rare opportunity to do whatever I wanted. I figured the season was over, and that meant I could do some new activities, maybe row with my mom and sister, rock climb, hike, or maybe something crazy, like just chilling.  My creative thoughts were overwhelmed by travel, school, and poor planning, however, so instead I spent the week biking and running, but not in a training sort of way.  More in a bike for fun and run to punish myself type of way. I talked to Dr Mike on Friday night, and he again suggested I find a 5k to run, and added that he would also like me to do a test set in the water and on the track, "just as a benchmark for next season".

"Well crap!" I thought.  After the swim was canceled in California, I decided it was time for my annual dechlorination phase, in which I let my pores clear out and spend a couple weeks away from the pool.  It was Friday night, and I hadn’t been in the water since Wednesday of the week before.  "That only matters in your head." Mike said, which I tried to believe, but either my head is strong, or Mike was only saying that to make me feel better because my times were awful.  In my 200 for time I positive split by seven seconds! (That means my second hundred was seven seconds slower than my first).  For those who don’t know, that’s bad. You want to try negative split, or at least even split your time trials.

Regardless of my times, the trip to the gym was worthwhile because Aaron Scheidies joined me, and afterwards he taught me some core exercises. I swear my core used to be strong, but the stuff Aaron is having me do is really hard.  Here’s a picture of the situation:  I’m sweating over a pilates ball next to Aaron — who seems to think his hangover is more painful that the exercises we’re doing, but he’s still able to crunch, sip from his bottle of water, and give me orders of how to correct my technique.  I’m not sure how he knew when my hips were dropping without being able to see me.

I’m going to finish with a non-sequitur.  I went to Sushi the other night with my parents.  It was crowded, so we sat at the bar. When our Sashimi showed up ate my first few pieces like I normally do – sans-soy sauce or wasabi.  As I scarfed down chopsticks full of raw salmon, tuna, prawn, scallop and sea bass, I got a wonderful lecture from the woman next to me at the bar about how good the sushi is if you dip it in soy sauce and wasabi.  If you saw a guy throwing down pieces of raw fish would you assume it was his first time eating sushi? I thought it was a little funny… made me want to go into Starbucks and give unsolicited lectures on creme and sugar.

Tomorrow? School and a track workout.  Thursday I’m running the Turkey Trot in Tacoma. Kurt’s doing it with me, anyone else want to join me? I have three more seats in the car!