May 7, 2002 (pre trip)

Currently my weekly training hours are at around 15 to 20 hours which I think is fairly typical for Ironman distance triathlon training. For the two weeks following May 18 while I am ‘triathling’ my way south to Provo, I’ll be putting in 6 to 8 hours per day for 14 days which puts me somewhere around 50 hours per week – a major increase from my current 15. I’m going to need to start to increase my weekly output so that I am ready for the trip.

Starting with todays uber swim. Since I plan to swim 10km across Whitefish Lake my first day (weather and mostly water temperature permitting), I am upping my Tuesday endurance swims by 15 minutes per week. Today was an excruciatingly long 90 minutes – no stopping (well, I peed once. Ok twice, but I polished off two bottles of gatorade). Next week, I’ll endure it for an hour and 45 minutes, then my next swim will be in whitefish lake for 3 hours plus.

The swim this morning went surprisingly well – crawling back and fourth in a 25 meter pool is more of a mental challenge than a physical one… There’s the bottom of the pool. Oh, there’s the lane marker on my right. Take a breath. There’s the bottom again. Wow. Really nice. Oh, look there – the lane marker again. Take a breath. Pretty blue plastic floaty balls. The bottom again. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. Listen to the water churning in my ear and nasal cavities. Hey – ‘Naval Academy’ rhymes with ‘nasal cavity’. That’s brilliant man!

The good news was that my underwater speedo radio started working again. The bad news is the station kept changing at will. It’s own will. The really bad news is it kept getting stuck on the light rock station which I figured Mariah Carry must be a major stock holder of. Easy listening radio personality banter. How fun!

Finished my morning workout with a quick hour spin on the gym bike (we’re still dealing with a bit of snow that fell yesterday). And I’ll add another hour tonight along with some weights and core exersizes for good measure.

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