Work, weather, and the attempted attainment of records...

So, the past two weeks have not been very accomodative of my workout plans.

Work has been a beast, and I'm putting in some serious overtime.  Due to my early mornings and/or late nights at work, I made it to two practices last week.  This week has been more of the same, with evening storms in the mix, too, preventing me from being able to practice even when I was able to get off work in time!  Grr!

This week I'm looking at two practices - I did Monday evening and will get tomorrow morning's practice.  I'm drawing a blank on how much yardage I did on Monday, but last Saturday's practice was a 3700.  I expect tomorrow's practice to be similar in length.

I'm feeling a lot better in the water.  My left shoulder is still weak (again, I have no idea why it's weaker than my right), but it isn't hurting as much when I swim--still don't do more than a 25 of fly when doing IM sets, so I'll just do fly drill for the rest of the fly portion.  Hopefully over the next couple weeks I'll be able to swim all the fly without doing any one arm drills.  My kick is slowly coming back, and last Saturday's hour and a half practice left me tired without being sore or painful.  I hope tomorrow's practice is similar in how I cope with it.

Tomorrow's practice is the last of long course season (although all of the pools we practice at are 25Y/M, the season is technically long course).  Short course starts on Monday, and with it, we switch to indoor pools.  Hopefully that will help take care of the weather issue that has been keeping me out of the pool this week!  This project at work is supposed to wind down next week (that being said, the completion date has been pushed back three times already, so I'm not exactly holding my breath), so I'm really hoping that the work side of things will start to let me swim more practices, too!

The first meet is October 15th, and it's a sprint meet.  I'm planning on attending it if I don't have to work that weekend.  The first full meet is the weekend of October 30th, and I'll definitely be attending it.

Doing some research, provided I can get back to near what my old speeds were, I have a chance of setting 8 team records for the 18-24 age group.  It has historically been a very small group for the team, and I think I'm the first person in that age group in several years, at least of those who will compete.  The records that are up for grabs are:

• 50 back (current record is a 29.31)
• 100 back (I get this one by default, since no one has swum it)
• 200 back (ditto)
• 50 fly (current record is a 24.81--this would be the hardest for me, since I think that was a bit faster than the fastest 50 fly I ever swam)
• 100 fly (current record is a 57.69--this is a bit slower than my old time, so it is "theoretically" in reach)
• 200 fly (by default)
• 200 IM (current record is a 2:06.18--in the general vicinity of my old time, if memory serves me)
• 400 IM (current record is a 4:44.78--almost 10 seconds slower than my old time, so that puts this one within reach)

There are a lot of factors that will need to come into play for me to get any of those records but the ones I get by default.  I gotta get my shoulders up to speed--as it stands right now, any record that includes swimming fly is out of the question until my shoulders can stand it.  I've gotta pick my speed up--I'm nowhere near those speeds right now, but given time between now and April, it is a possibility.  In regards to the 400 IM, I don't even know if I want to swim a distance that long anymore!  It was a pain in the butt back in the day, and now I won't have a coach forcing me to swim it...or the 500...or the 1000.

My long term goal in terms of competition/records/Nationals cuts is to get back up to speed in back and fly.  Those are the two strokes I had the most success at back in the day, so I hope that they are still my strengths now.  I'm a lot stronger, physically speaking, than I was back then, so hopefully I can put that extra strength and muscle to use in the water.