Weekly Update: 6-12 February 2017

Last week was different from usual because I participated in two swim meets- Myall Masters on Saturday and Western Metropolitan RSL on Sunday. As a result I did less swimming training. 

Outfit
A black and white flat lay just for something different and because it looks cool.

Running
This week I completed my standard routine of three runs. It was hard fitting in the Thursday night run because I was already so tired from the week and had swimming training the next morning. I also had the busiest weekend ever so knew there would be no opportunity to catch up on sleep. It was a relatively slow 7km because the weather was still very hot. The usual Tuesday morning run went well because it's always more fun to train with friends.

I went to Tea Gardens on Saturday for swimming so I used the opportunity to visit another Parkrun. It was a 2 hour 45 minute drive each way so I stopped just past half way at Lake Macquarie Parkrun. Being a regular at Parkrun now, having done a total of 46 now and 42 of them being at my home Parkrun, I always find it interesting seeing other locations. Lake Macquarie was a big Parkrun with around 250 participants even on the morning of a heatwave. The course was almost identical to The Ponds which I tried out a couple of weeks ago. Coincidentally I was there for the 4th birthday celebration. If I didn't have to swim later in the day I would have enjoyed some free cake and champagne (turns out my swimming meet didn't go very well so I should have just had the cake and champagne). It was nice how Lake Macquarie Parkrun gave out so many awards and recognised loyal participants, which rarely happens with Parkruns in Sydney. I ran the course in 24 minutes and 54 seconds, with an overall ranking of 42/249 and a gender ranking of 5/115. It was 1 minute and 18 seconds outside my best time but I wasn't going to push it on a day of racing swimming.  

No Tennis
For the second Sunday in a row I had to miss tennis due to a swimming commitment. I've really missed it but I'll be returning this weekend. I might even play on Saturday too. 

Swimming
It was a massive week of swimming so I have a lot to write about. I missed two training sessions because I raced at swimming meets on both Saturday and Sunday (weekly kms way less than usual). In total I did three training sessions, two carnivals and usual Wednesday night swim club. Wednesday night was one of my best ever swim club nights with all personal bests. I'm happy with one personal best so all of them is very rare. 2:41.37 for 200m freestyle, 38.51 for 50m backstroke (second time under 39 seconds), 42.81 for 50m breaststroke and 14.64 for 25m freestyle (only third time under 15 seconds in endless attempts). I'm most happy with the breaststroke because I rarely have improvement in breaststroke, and there's a history to it which I'll write about later. Overall I've been pleased with my swim club times this year.

On Saturday I attended an out of Sydney Masters Meet at Tea Gardens. It was an almost three hour drive each way. I don't usually travel so much for swimming but it was a meet I particularly wanted to attend. It was an incredibly disappointing swim meet for me. One of my times was acceptable but the other three were terrible. In fact the 50m fly was the worst time I'd done in a number of months. I can make all the excuses I want- I didn't get much sleep, I drove three hours to get there, it was a heatwave day, struggling with anxiety, I'd done a 5km run earlier, I'd trained too hard the day before- and some of them may be valid. However, at the end of the day I still did terrible times and nothing takes that way. I simple don't accept this low standard of performance from myself. To be honest I had a bit of a meltdown after the last event. I was so incredibly upset. I've put everything into training for the last year, I couldn't have tried any more. It's disappointing beyond explanation to not see the results. I feel like such a failure still not being good enough. Also I'm really struggling with the anxiety of racing. I always feel so much pressure for a certain outcome or time in each race. It's only pressure I put on myself but the anxiety is unbearable. I have to address it somehow. My friend was incredibly supportive and I'm so thankful for how nice he was to me when I was really upset. I was in a really bad place and it took awhile to get me out of it. The best part of swimming has been the friends I've made. 

On Sunday I had another swimming carnival, Western Metropolitan RSL Carnival. It was my second year of winning the open 50m championship race. This time last year it was my first 50m freestyle in 12 years so I went into the race with zero expectations. I was lucky to win last year because there was hardly any competition and I was three seconds slower than currently. This year was much more competitive and the race was won by a small margin. Being the current title holder I felt a world of expectation and pressure going into the race and I'd been nervous about it for weeks now. I came away with the outcome I wanted of winning but it wasn't a great time and there were so many aspects of the race I wanted to improve. I need to improve my sprints. My times aren't where I want them to be and I'm better at longer distances. I feel disadvantaged with the open races always being 50m freestyle. I'll work on improving. Here's the trophy.

Improvements
-After the pain in my upper back a few weeks ago I've returned to the full program of weights. We've worked out the reason for my injury, turns out I was doing one of the weights incorrectly. I've been doing better this week. 
-I'd like to add in a program of 5 push-ups and 20 crunches three times a week (in addition to the weights and the usual bootcamp). 
-At bootcamp we did 6 x 100m sprints with a 300m walk recovering in between. The sprints are such good training so it feels good having fitted that in.
- I still need to improve my diet.
- I'd like to focus on improving my sprint times in swimming. I'll have to work out the best way to do it. 

Weekly Photo
100m sprints. I really like bootcamp lately. It's so nice to be outside in the warm weather, I can chat to my friends more than during swimming training and with increased strength in the last couple of months, the program is no longer incredibly painful for me. 

What did you achieve this week?