Ouch

I am a success in and around the pool.  Sounds cocky, but it’s true.  I feel most comfortable, ironically, in a Speedo with my Swedes digging into my eye sockets.  I am good at swimming.  I am good at coaching swimming.  I’ve had swimmers take themselves further than their natural ability should have.  Swimming is a sport, unlike any that I’ve played, that makes the most sense to me.  It’s a sport where nothing but your own hard work determines success.  I wish that I had realized this earlier.  I wish that I had known early on what hard work was, what it feels like and where it can take you.  Swimming is why I could go to college loan free, why I got to travel around the country and how I found my fiancée.  I got to swim in the fastest swim meet in the world, twice.  I got to practice with the best that ever was, is and will be. 

Unfortunately, I never knew what it meant to work hard in the water.  Swimming has always came natural to me.  I was born with short legs, a long torso, long arms and big feet.  More or less, I was built to swim.  These are the facts. 

Also a fact, Crossfit, and more so, Olympic weightlifting has taught me what it means to work hard.  To struggle with things that I was never meant to be good at.  I wasn’t born to be strong.  I was born with fast-twitch muscles, true, but they are best used to propel myself through the water, not a weight over my head. 

For these reasons, I am getting back in the pool.  I don’t know what’s going to come of it.  What could start as a casual 5,000 a couple times a week could turn into serious practices, joining a team and pushing my ass off to make it to OT’s in 2012; hopefully in different events as I am way too old to swim the 200fly. 

I certainly won’t give up the heavy lifting though as I feel that my being a more complete athlete, meaning stronger, would transfer well into my swimming.  If I can work my schedule around these issues, I plan on following the Mikes Gym website 4-5 days a week (maybe filling in some months with CFFB or even the Main Page) in the mornings and swimming in the afternoons.  There is a oly-lift competition in Rhode Island this summer that Watertown Sue informed me about that I am really looking forward to competing in.

I know that I can’t go the distance like I used to (don’t ever expect a good 1500 out of me) but I feel like I can still bring it in the sprints a la Dara Torres.  Anyway, I have a promise to keep to Oh Mary about giving it one more try. 

The only obstacle is becoming a resident of Cheshire so that I can go swimming.

WoD Wednesday 6/17

OHS 10x1 @155# - went light today - more on this in a minute.

Press 5x5 @155# - supposed to be SnPP - explained... wait for it...

HLR 3x10

Back Ext 3x10

My knee is killing me.  It's acute and it's right above my right knee.  I had a really hard time even making it to parallel.  It honestly feels like the tendons are going to snap as I head down.  So today I did some ROM stuff and kept my weights light so as not to aggravate my leg.  We'll see how this feels tomorrow, hopefully I'll be my usual self, healing like Wolverine.

Why You Should Eat Red Meat

10 Reasons to Give Up Grains

Eat Grass Fed Beef, Save the Environment

7 Habits of Highly Effective Athletes (via)

Oxidative

As the title of my blog might suggest; I don’t do cardio.  I just don’t.  I spent years of my life dedicated to being fit in the oxidative pathway.  I spent hours upon hours staring at a black line, controlling my breathing and paying attention to pacing.  I swam.  I swam competitively and very well for many years coming within two seconds of Olympic Trials Finals in the 200 butterfly. 

As some might understand, I grew tired of being skinny (ladies, trust me, you look better with a little meat, e.g. Jocelyn Forrest).  This is why I’ve turned to strength training.  It appeals to me as it is something vastly different to what I spent my life doing, something that got me into college and something that I was reasonably good at.  Granted, I was a sprinter more than anything (the 200fly being the exception, I could just suffer longer than others) but I trained long and hard. 

But that’s gone.  My aerobic capacity is null.  And while I don’t regret any part of my training I am becoming a certain type of athlete.  I have pigeon holed myself, again, into being good at one thing and one thing only.  Hopefully I can include some different modes of training that would help me become the broad general athlete that I know I can be and that Crossfit encourages.

WoD:

Snatch - 3{1@185, 195, 200}

Sn Pull - 2x3 @ 235#

SnDL - 3@255#, 2x2 @ 275#

OHSitups

Back Ext. 3x10

Sprint 8x100m @1:00 - held :15.  I used to do this set swimming and have no problems.  Wow.

Why You Should Do a 5K