Elbow Room

Some may think elbow room means extra space. Others will remember it as a bar in Ft. Lauderdale that college swimmers frequented. In my case, it means time since I broke mine. On December 20, I fell on my stupid snowboard, broke my elbow, and put a serious dent in my swimming. After a great run of 13 weeks with over 10,000 yds/wk, I went 6 weeks with zero yards. Zip. Nada. My bike and run made great improvements, which are far more important, but my "ego" sport took a major hit.

I finally got in the first week in February and did a whopping 500 yards. Then I gradually built up yardage so I could do 1500 yrs 3x/wk, and picked that up by 500 yds each week. This is the second week in a row of 3x3000 yds. And most importantly, I'm finally able to put in some effort. For the longest time, I had zero speed. I didn't feel tired, but there was nothing I could do to go under 1:20 for 100 yds. Last Friday, we did a single hard 200 at the end of the workout, and I was happy to go 2:25. Today we did a bunch of swims 200-400 yds long, and I was able to bring the average speed down from 1:19 to 1:12. That isn't much compared to where I should normally be, but I'll take it. I can tell I'll be back at it pretty soon.

I've been working on my race schedule for the summer. Other than Budapest, my only Oly race is Mooseman. That isn't ideal, but I'd really like to cut back on the travel time compared to last year. It just took too much time away from home. I added the Fireman Sprint in late August- two weeks before Budapest. Normally I'd like to have it three weeks out to ensure full rest, but there's nothing else that works for me after Bethel. Other than Crank the Kank, I'd like to do some other time trials- three possibilities are Kennebunk, Cape and Freeport. The problem is that they all fall either the day after another race or are the same day. For example, on May 30, there's a new 4 mi road race in Falmouth, Pineland has a running festival with all sorts of distances on the trails, and there's the Cape TT.

Finally, on the drive home tonight, I saw about two dozen bikers on the road. In shorts. In March. I'm really looking forward to a good long ride outside this weekend- the first one of the season. I hope the forecast holds.