Wow - What a week!! Last week’s workouts went like clockwork. Adding swim practice 2 days a week is forcing me to refine my nutrition program. I’m feeling tired in the afternoon, but it’s not clear at this point if that is due to a lack of sleep or lack of food. I’m increasing my calories a bit for this week and adding in some more carbs to keep my energy levels up. I’m waking up fairly easily at 5AM now. There were a few days last week where I had fairly involved mental arguments with myself; however, the workouts won over more sleep.

Swim practice was a lot different than I expected. I met my coach at 5:20am. After a brief discussion, I jumped in. He had me swim 25 meters to establish a starting point. I was very happy to hear a “not bad” as I grabbed the wall and caught my breath. I instantly started thinking about the triathlon being a 1/4 mile swim and I started do some math in my head while trying to listen to the coach. 1/4 mile is 400 meters - 25 goes in to 400 - 16 times - wait that can’t be right. As the coach said swim another 25, I realized that I had a lot of work to do. My coach gave me his assessment of my technique and started to correct my issues through a series of drills. I really never expected to be doing drills. I thought I’d just do a bunch of laps and the coach would correct my problems and tell me to keep swimming. As it turns out, swim practice is about 50% swimming and 50% drills. I completed 2 sessions with my coach last week. My plan is to do a few sessions on my own and then hire the coach again for a check up in a week or so. I think it makes sense to be practicing good technique rather than just continuing to reinforce my self-taught, inefficient swimming skills. Time will tell.

I also did a “Brick” for the first time last week. I rode my stationary bike for 90 minutes and then shuffled over to my treadmill where I learned that running legs are different than cycling legs. I felt very strange. I was telling my legs to get going, but they were a bit confused. After a minute or 2 or 3 at a slow walk, my legs started to work properly and I gradually increased the speed to about 5.5 mph which is a very slow pace. I think the brick served its purpose of experiencing a portion of the bike - run transition. I continued for 10 minutes at this pace and things seemed fine.

Overall - I think I handled the week well. I had some lower back pain over the weekend which was most likely caused from sloppy form in the weight room. My goals for week 9 are to do all scheduled workouts, eat according to my plan, and focus on strict form in the weight room.