The Week Before

Last week had some pretty cool spots.  This weekend we were in DC for a wedding, but the pics from that deserve it's own post.  This is about the week before.  The week after the recovery week.

I got in a quick 5k run saturday but the rest of the weekend was in the wedding mode.  Monday nights swim was almost 3000 yards and it was just fun.  I was flying through the water.  The t/w/th grind was regular and uneventful. But that swim...

Flying. When you go through the water repeatedly, you learn how to detect the smallest changes in your stroke.  Just like a good golfer can control hip rotation or something.  Monday I could tell the stroke was on point.  If you go fast enough you can actually feel the surface of the water on the top of your head.  If you can feel it on your forehead or hairline then you are looking too far up, which means the bottom half of the body is too far under the water surface, which creates a ton of drag.  Feeling that water surface line closer to the back of the head means you've got the right amount of submersion.  Then the body has to rock back and forth to a very specific angle.  Breathing should be done asyncronously to the shoulder rotation, and if the head stays in a proper angle it creates a nice pocket to breath in.  Don't look up.  Control the rotation with your hips and shoulders, and use the big muscles in the back and shoulders to pull through.  When you put it all together it creates a rhythm like a clock and creates an efficiency that means you can go on forever, just cruising really fast down the lane.  It's an incredibly beautiful thing.

Thursday's swim..... I couldn't really get the muscles working right.  My form started breaking down towards the end.  I was tired.  This is not a bad thing, after that 4 day block I should have been tired.  So that was expected, but not as much fun as Monday's swim.  Man when it all comes together like that it gets fun.  Like a golfer that beats his best round by 4 strokes.

Check out the size of that mug!  The kids love to throw pottery when they stay with Kelley's mom.  Gene has a few potters wheels and lots of clay.  This mug and a few other pieces came through the kiln last week and we got them back.  So cool.  The kids got to sculpt and glaze all of the pieces.

Evil Genius made this tremendous coffee mug.  It is so freaking big it's wonderful!  This thing holds more than 4 cups of coffee.  You can fill it up twice and empty the pot.  And since I've been trying to cut back to only 2 mugs of coffee in the mornings, this is really helping me achieve the goal.  EG claims that she wanted to make one that big so that we wouldn't have to get up and go into the kitchen as much for refills.  Helping us be lazy is a good thing.