Commentary by Jeff Commings<\/i><\/p>\n
PHOENIX, Arizona, June 6. MANY of the swimmers competing in the U.S. Olympic Trials are starting the much-anticipated taper phases of their season — everyone but me.<\/p>\n
Because I only do 3,500 yards\/meters on average per workout, it would be silly for me to start tapering now. I don't have that far to go down in yardage! I plan to do my usual 10-day taper, but I'll be stopping my dryland work a couple of days before that.<\/p>\n
For the past couple of weeks, I've been feeling very sluggish in the pool. It's been very difficult to make my body swim fast, and as such, I have not been putting up consistently fast times or being consistent with the type of effort I put into certain sets. If my body didn't want to swim fast, I backed off instead of pushing through. Twenty years ago (or even 10 years ago), that's the way I would have gotten through those tough times. But I don't know if it's wisdom or wimpiness that's made me put on the brakes.<\/p>\n
Now, I feel like I'm starting to turn a corner, even though the quantity of my workouts hasn't changed much, and I'm still putting in some decent quality in and out of the pool. On Tuesday, I did two 50s breast fast from a push, with about three minutes or so rest in between each. I went 33.2 on the first one, 33.6 on the second one. I haven't been able to go under 34 for two straight 50s since … well, in a very, very, very long time.<\/p>\n
When I have good sets like this, I try not to get too excited about it and put higher expectations on myself. This is because the following day I'm usually put back in my place by a disastrous performance on a particular set. I'm doing my best to not do cartwheels about those 33-second 50s, because it's extremely encouraging. I'm just enjoying that result, and continuing to take each day as it comes.<\/p>\n
Since I did so well yesterday in breaststroke, I figured I deserved a day off from breaststroke. Remember that I am also training for the U.S. Masters nationals the week after I swim the 100 breast at Trials. I'm excited to be able to swim fast more than once in that pool, especially the 100 free! I don't know who I will be racing in that event in Omaha, but I did see the roster of swimmers signed up in the 35-39 age group<\/a>, and I don't think I can beat Matt Eisenhuth, Brian Jacobson and Scott Greenwood in a 100 freestyle! As such, I need to do some sprint freestyle work to make sure I can compete with them. Not only was it a nice physical break from breaststroke, but a mental one as well.<\/p>\n I was starting to feel the snap in my strokes come back to me today. It's still feeling a little forced, but not as forced as it was on Sunday, or even yesterday! <\/p>\n Today was probably the final truly tough dryland workout I'll do this season. During the session, I thought back to the very first weeks with J.R. Rosania, when I was gasping after some of the sets he was giving me. I'm still gasping a little bit and sweating a lot, but I'm not coming home tied in knots like a pretzel and forgoing dinner for 10 hours of sleep. (I'm not kidding about that last statement. I did come home from working out with J.R. once and fell asleep almost instantly.)<\/p>\n The point of today's workout was explosive speed. Here you can see me doing some ball throwdowns with a 15-pound ball, which was five pounds heavier than I usually use!<\/p>\n