Do You Have Your Tickets To The Gun Show?

As mentioned, this is a rest focused week. I'm not sure how I feel about these weeks since my motivation takes a deep dive and it's really hard to get back into the swing of things. I know it helps the body recover and rebuild to come back stronger, but it's just so damn hard to sit it out knowing how hard it is to start back up again.

I have been putting in around 10,000-12,000 meters/week at the pool pretty religiously over the past few months and my schedule called for only 6,000 this week. I skipped Tuesday's and Wednesday's practice and drug myself out of bed for practice this morning (only to get two texts from friends saying they weren't going to make it...what?!). When I hopped in the pool and swam my first 100 I thought my arms were going fall off! Where did my strength go? Our workout was 3200 meters with a 300 meter warm up and I did 500 meters extra pull to get in my 4000 that I am trying to hit at a minimum per practice. My arms felt like wet noodles when I finally emerged from the pool. It's always fun having to push yourself out of the pool after a tough workout. Most people gracefully push out, turn and sit on the deck all in one seamless move and dab themselves dry. I huff, puff, grunt and flop onto the deck and lay there hoping someone will come throw me a towel to save me from embarrassment!

This is how my arms felt after practice...wet and noodley like.

This is how I look! Yeah right!, someone pull me from the pool if that ever happens! Although at least my arms won't flap around when I wave good bye (or when I "raise the roof")...I have to say, my guns are changing from all this swimming!

I have also discovered some fun ways to pass the time while swimming lap after lap of mind numbing long sets...it's called "what's that on the bottom of the pool?" Seriously...there are some creepy things out there. I used to be oblivious to all the floated around since I had a severe case of goggle fog...but someone taught me about Johnson's baby shampoo (rub some inside your lenses, rinse and magic!!! no fog EVER...brilliant) and now I can see EVERYTHING! A few weeks ago it was the two hairballs that over the course of practice became one giant hairball...today it was a neon green button (where does that come from?) and a floating leaf (are we simulating open water or something?) and of course the obligatory hair ball was there...thankfully there were no barf inducing used band-aids, ugh those give me the heebie jeebies! It really helps pass the time thinking and pondering how these things migrate into the county rec center pool!