Day two of swimming and goals...plus a morning workout

So despite the late night last night I was able to get up and make it to Crossfit this am. I was nervous about working out because my knee was still being somewhat retarded, but I went and I'm glad I did. Even though Monday to Saturday doesn't seem like a long time, my calluses were disappearing, and I was starting to feel very lethargic from not working out. I made it through our four station, five round warm-up without really any problems, except for incredibly tight hip flexers. We shot straight into working on chin up volume and I started out great! I was psyched! But by about my forth round, my number dropped drastically! I had gone from a nice uneven 9 chins a turn, down to four, and then eventually to three. My form felt pretty strong which was certainly a positive, but I felt pretty beat. Our team hit 174 chins in 10 minutes, so I think we did pretty well. From there we hopped into jump squats, which I modified to air squats. I should have been banging those puppies out like nobody's business, but for some reason the most I could amass in a round was 39. Being out this week really hurt me, and I was bummed about that number.

To finish up today Jerry had us do 1 v 1 tug of war plus some team tug of war. After 2 rounds of tug of war with Laura, I decided that the team tug was probably not a good idea for me, so I backed down on that one. Overall, I felt rusty, but glad to be back. After going home and attempting to get some things done before round two of swimming it was time to get back to the bus and head to Arlington.

I have to say that I was a little concerned when I finally managed to make it to the bus. I mean, really, traffic on 95 on a Saturday at 300? C'mon! Anyway, moving right along.... :P I was concerned because the team looked very flat. They were quiet (which for them is nothing short of an act of the big man upstairs) and they just looked tired. I was really worried about how they were going to perform. So many of them had finished with best times last night, I was worried that they would not swim well in the consolations/finals tonight.

However, to my surprise (but delight) they started off well. Relay teams swam well, and our first individual swimmer in the water dropped 5 more seconds off his 200 free time, which had been his personal best yesterday. From there, it just kept going. Over half the team posted personal bests, including my same swimmer who just yesterday dropped 46 seconds off her 500 free! Today she turned around and swam a great race and dropped another 10 seconds and placed 2 places above her seed! I was so proud of the way my kids swam tonight, but I was again, coerced if you will, into thinking about personal bests and goals. Think of it this way. District swimming is a two day event with prelims on Friday, and consolations/finals on Saturday based on your performance on Friday. So basically, it's almost like doing Fran two days in a row. Today you hit a sub 10 minute Fran... tomorrow, we're going to ask you to do the same thing all over again, but now do it faster. It seems insane! It seems impossible that one would be able to give personal best performances two days in a row! But, it happened. Several times. And that got me to thinking that, well, maybe my goals aren't quite challenging enough. What if I've done myself a disservice and am selling myself short.

After lots of consideration, I decided that some goals were sufficiently challenging for me, while others would need to be tweaked. So, here are my "revised" short term goals.

1. Post a sub 10 minute pro level Fran
2. Hit 20 chins on the max test
3. Hit 5 hand stand push-ups *with the standard of head to floor*
4. Hit 10 push ups *after form modification, but with the standard of nose, chest hips to the floor*

Well it's been another long day... as I sit and type, my eyelids are getting very heavy, and the heat from my extra blankets is taking over... I like ending with quotes, so here's another of my favorites to round out my post tonight....

"If you eat fish sticks, you'll swim faster, because they're made of fish!"