swimming backwards

I just did what might be the most depressing thing ever.

I am at work, on nights, required to stay awake, so I figured I would create a table showing all of the "testing" that I did in 2010 (most of these are swim tests - I also found one bike test) so that I can track how I am doing this season against last season. Every time I do a swim test, I have to click back through tons of workouts in Training Peaks in order to see how fast I was last time. I decided to get organized. (Alexa-organized which means I will create this testing table but I won't clean my apartment for another 3 weeks).

I also created a table to fill in my 2011 testing so that all the times will be there in one place for comparison - i.e. my refrigerator.

What is depressing is how much I suck.

I am NEVER taking a 1.5 month off-season again. I don't care how glorious the laziness was; it's just not worth the backsliding in fitness that I am now trying to deal with.

For example. My first swim test ever was on 1/21/10. It's a 400 yd swim test that we repeat twice. Always the same. I swam a 6:20. This was after I had been training with Mary for 21 days. This improved to 6:02 by May, and has now backslid to the horribly slow time of 6:27 as of Nov. 9th. Granted, that 6:27 was like my 3rd swim after many, many weeks of NO swimming, but it's still discouraging. I test this weekend, and if that time doesn't drastically improve, I may drown myself.

I AM swimming 3x a week at the moment instead of 2x, and I'd like to keep that up as long as possible because I'm sure it will be a huge help in improving my swim.

As depressing as it is to think about the loss of fitness during the length of time that I was out of the pool and off the bike, it is even more depressing to think about how long it's been since I've really been able to run. We're talking 3 months. I ran today for 30 minutes. I can't even hold a 10 minute mile. That right there is enough to make me cry. I am not a bad runner - I should be able to pop off 8:00 - 8:30 minute miles without a problem, but I am so out of shape that I just can't do it. I'm starting to freak out because I REALLY want to see gains on the run in Ironman, and how is that going to be possible if I'm barely running?! I'm ready to say f- this injury, which is what's going to happen anyways because as of the first of the year, my chiropractor is no longer going to accept my insurance.

Going back through my training log also made me lust after high volume weeks. Screw this recovery week that I am on, give me more hours! (Ugh, I know, recovery is apparently IMPORTANT). Pssssh. And perhaps since I am on overnights, I shouldn't fight the recovery week because this week is going to be hell anyways!