72 days out...

I am very nicely surprised right now seeing that I am 72 days out of Nationals. For some reason I kind of had it wrong yesterday thinking it was about 65-ish. Technically, I just gained a week, ;)

Being so close to THE day, I started organizing the paper work necessary for competing overseas, entering those results in the Swimming South Africa's (SSA) database and looking at some test swim meets. For making my result count in SA I need to bring with me a ZIP file or send a link to SSA. I hope it works out nicely. Sometimes results get published very late and if I miss the deadline of 3 months, they won't count... which happened 2 years ago. However, now it is not the point when I should be thinking about this.What is important now is training, nutrition and rest:

Training is gong pretty well so far. Now it is the time when I am supposed to "kill" myself and this is exactly what am I doing. For a second week in a row I am swimming lots of 400s- not bad for a person who couldn't handle even 200m butterfly one month ago, right? Believe it or not this is my preparation for my 100m race. As you know I need to catch up a bit with my training and increase my endurance and this the best way to go. After a week of bad muscles aches I started getting used to the huge volume of training... well at least half of me. Right now I am giving myself heart attacks every time I swim, because I am not sore anymore and I can push so much harder. Swimming and dry land training won't get any easier soon. However, I am getting some help- my coach is back on deck!!! It makes a huge difference. It is so hard training on my own- I cannot push myself as hard as my coach can push me, no one can, and secondly, knowing that he is there helps me focus even more on what I am doing instead of thinking of resting and how I am the only person from the entire squat in the pool right now.

Here's my new favorite main set of all times, which I did yesterday evening:
x3
400 Fr (~ 15sec Rest) + 400Fly (~30sec Rest) + 400IM (~30sec rest) + 400Fr (~1min Rest).
It is a quite hard one, however very enjoyable....or perhaps this is the reason why I enjoyed it so much?! Believe it or not the 400fly and 400IM are my favorite parts. :) I wrote down for you the approximate rest intervals between the 400s rather than starting times, because I assume you will have different starting times than me anyway. Favorite or not it is very tiring and I hope I won't do that one any time soon again, haha. I assume coach will come up with something even more challenging though. ;)

Probably the advanced swimmers and athletes among you know the rules of performance orientated nutrition: eat healthy everything according to your training schedule however if nothing healthy around, just get the calories you need and go back to healthy food asap. And when I am saying "everything" I really mean it right now. You cannot believe the amounts of food I am shoving. I eat almost every hour and still wake up hungry in the middle of the night sometimes- 4 eggs, 2 pizzas (I know I know, this is not healthy!), 250g steak, 250g green salad and spinach, 100g pasta, 2 large potatoes, 125g cottage cheese, 3x50g choc bunnies and many more choc eggs (what? It is Easter after all!), 100g yogurt and oats... this is my list for last weekend's (!!!) munch. I hope I don't need that much food over next weekend as well, otherwise I will be broke much earlier than I ever thought. On the other hand I lost 400g body weight over the same weekend and with all that training I really don't believe I lost muscle mass. Sooooo, do you still want to take me out for dinner? :D

Have happy Holidays and good luck to those running the Two Oceans Marathon!

hugs, Nora