Week 1

The first few weeks of the program are designed to ease everybody into the training regimen. A few 10-20 minute runs, 30 minute bike sessions, and the beginning of the organized swim clinics which will be held every Tuesday (individual swim workouts are spread over other days). There are two choices for the swim clinics: 5:30-6:30 AM, and 8:00-9:00 at night. We chose the former for the time being. I am about as far from a morning person as you can get, but if you're going to commit to something you might as well go all the way, right? Right.

Liz and I are up at 4:45 and out the door to pick up Steph at 5:05 for the short drive to the Lab School just outside of Georgetown where TNT has been holding swim clinics for a few years. We arrive at 5:30 to the sight of coaches and trainees standing outside the locked doors in the freezing cold. The lifeguard who is supposed to open the pool isn't there and we don't have a key. 10 minutes go by and some calls are made. 15 minutes. 20. Just shy of 6:00, the bad news: we won't be swimming at the Lab School today. Sorry! Getting up before 5:00 only to hear that was pretty deflating. Determined not to waste those precious hours of sleep Liz, Teen, Steph and I headed over to UDC for their 6:30 opening and get in a workout.

The rest of the week's schedule is pretty uneventful. I'm replacing the mid-week bike workouts with runs; long rides on the weekends will have to do for now. It is so much easier to head out on a short run than a short ride: getting air in the tires, hauling the bike up from the basement, riding 10-15 minutes just to find a stretch of road or pathway where you can ride without stopping. Plus it's safer to run in the dark.

Up again on Thursday morning for a 6:30 swim. Having an organized set of drills to do makes the time go by faster than just endlessly swimming laps. It also gives us some insight to what we should be developing form-wise with drills to make our stroke more streamlined and efficient and not just more powerful. All I know is that they are hard.

Saturday's Jolly Fat Man run was no set distance: you run what you feel like running. For me that turns out to be about 2 1/4 miles out then a walk back with another 1/2 mile run in there somewhere. Not bad considering it was freezing, 17 degrees at the start. That wasn't so great. I couldn't feel my fingers about a mile in. The hot chocolate and food at RiRa was nice