Sunday, November 29, 2009

What a week

Another Thanksgiving Day has come and gone. And just like past years, I'm sure that I'm about 5 pounds heavier than I was about a week ago. I decided to take a few days off to let a little lingering injury heal, and I also ate an abnormally large amount of food since it was Thanksgiving. I went home Wednesday and had an amazing dinner in Corbin on Thursday. I traveled to Bowling Green on Friday and had another Thanksgiving meal on Saturday. I have not worked out in a week and I'm ready to get going. My off season officially starts tomorrow. I'm cutting my "sweets" intake down A LOT considering I ate enough in the last 4 days to feed a small family for a week.

And I don't have any exciting "CATS" info to post this week as we suffered yet another Heartbreaking loss to UT. I hate the Vols more and more every year because of these losses we keep suffering. I would almost rather lose by 20+ points than to lose in OT. However, the Cats bball team did bring home the big W from the "Cancun Challenge." The playing conditions weren't ideal considering we played in a ballroom with chandeliers hanging from the low ceiling. There were large cracks in the hardwood court, and a buffet was only feet from the baseline. But we still managed to play alright. A friend of mine made a joke saying "of course we were playing in the Cancun Challenge. Billy Gillespie scheduled that tourny because the bar was 5 feet from the court."

I thought that was funny. But the big game is next Saturday: UK vs. UNC here in Lexington. I can't wait.

Tony

Sunday, November 22, 2009

C A T S... Cats, Cats, Cats

We have had a wonderful weekend in athletics here at UK and I couldn't be happier. Casey and the rest of the UK swim team traveled down to Knoxville to compete at the UT invitational. The team swam really well all weekend and the girls' team managed to bring home the victory. The defeated UT, and Virginia Tech (both who defeated them earlier in the year) along with Alabama. The guys weren't as fortunate. They were out scored by UT by only 4 points. But all in all, the team had their best meet of the year by far. Casey swam season best times in all of her events including the 200 IM, 200 free, 100 free, and 200 fly.

UK basketball defeated Rider yesterday here in Lexington by almost 30 points, and we looked the best we have all year. I get more and more excited about every game that we play. John Wall and company are really fun to watch. They are headed down to Cancun to finish up the tournament this coming Tuesday and Wednesday. And UK football defeated the Georgia bulldogs in Athens for the first time since 1977. We are now 7 - 4. This has been an up and down year for us in football. We should not have lost to MSU or USC, but we pulled out some big wins against UGA, and Auburn. I just really hope we can beat UT this coming weekend. I'm tired of losing to them.

I'm sure there were some other exciting things going on in other sports as well, but these were the top 3 in my book. And now its 1pm on a Sunday which can only mean 1 thing: it's Fantasy football time.

And on some sad news, I will be missing my first NCAA xc meet in over 6 years. Me, and several other buddies have traveled to watch the NCAA meet the past 6 years in a row. We all delayed in making plans this year, and now we aren't going. I guess I'll just watch the meet on tv tomorrow.


Tony

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Pain

I read an article about pain in the new "Running Times" and it's a pretty good article. It discusses how the top runners in the sport deal with pain during a race and their different perspectives are pretty interesting. The Japanese runners use gaman which is the Japanese concept of enduring pain with dignity and grace. I know that most people don't like to deal with that amount of pain, but I guess the Japanese like to see how much they can endure. Other runners talk about breaking the race into segments so you just have to deal with the pain in shorter amounts of time thus making the race go by faster. The African runners talk about relying on their strength that they get from religion. Haile Gebrselassie (WR holder in the marathon) talks about accepting the pain rather than fighting it.

It's a pretty good article. Maybe I'll start thinking about Gaman instead of getting nervous and dreading a hard workout before I even start it. I have witnessed several swimmers on my team phych them selves out before a hard workout just because the set "looks hard." And I know that I've done this myself. I tell myself that it's going to hurt, and I give in to the pain and end up not having a good workout. If I could just not think about the workout, and do it, then I would be much better off, along with a few other people that I know.

Anyways, training has been going pretty good. My running feels really good as of lately. I have had a few faster paced runs which were unplanned. I would just feel good and pick up the pace for no reason, and finish the run feeling like I didn't try that hard. I did a 5 mile fartlek yesterday which was unplanned and I ended up running the 5 miles in 28:10 which I feel is pretty good for the time of year. My swimming has been hit and miss, but my bad days I'm still holding a decent pace that I couldn't have held in past years, so I know that I'm getting faster in the water, I just really dislike those slow days.

I hit just under 50 miles last week and will be around 55 miles for this week. My swimming yardage has been higher than usual, but it'll probably take a little hit over the next 2 weeks with a big swim meet at our pool this weekend, and Thanksgiving next weekend. But with these breaks in swimming, I'm going to start biking.

My first swim meet as a coach starts tomorrow. We are hosting our annual Autumn Classic this weekend and the kids are swimming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm looking forward to watching them swim. And several of them found my blog this week and wanted shout outs. Kelsey Mclaughlin, Caroline Jacobs, and Casey Ren are three of the girls that I'll be watching swim this weekend. Good luck girls.

T-Bird

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Wednesday Update

After a great weekend with the family in Bowling Green, I'm back in Lexington for the usual stuff. I got to have dinner with the family at my grandparents Friday night, do a few workouts with my bro, see my sister as a cheerleader for WKU for the first time, and just have a great weekend in general. I am now enjoying all of the apples and apple cider that I can handle thanks to my grandparents who own "Jackson's Orchard" in Bowling Green, KY. And I know that Eric, Beth, and Casey have enjoyed them as well.

I have really been working hard in the water, and also been putting in the work on the road. I'm still 2 days behind on my running challenge, but that isn't bad for over 30 days of running. And I don't have a workout for today but I did get a suggestion of a video to post on here. This is just a little time trial for fun at the University of Texas. One guy does a 100 backstroke for time (with no 15 meter rule, so it's pretty much all under water) and another is a 150 breaststroke for time. The most impressive thing is the 100 underwater.


http://www.floswimming.org/videos/play/80787-friday-afternoon-texas

and here is another video that is just funning.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/failblog/videos/326/

Tony

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

November already?

Sorry for the lack of posting in the past few weeks but I haven't really had much to blog about now since the season is over but I'll give you a quick update.

Training has been going pretty good. I still have yet to touch my bike since my last race, but I have been slowly upping my mileage in running, and trying to hit some big numbers in swimming as well. I did swim a PR for yardage a few weeks ago by swimming over 37,000 yards, but I proceeded to catch a little cold the following Monday so I took 2 days off from the water, and then took a few days really easy so I was around 15,000 for that week. I managed to hit over 30,000 last week and I felt like I didn't swim a ton either, so that is a good sign. My last three weeks of running has been 40, 47, and 50 miles. This week is going to be a down week before I keep going up the ladder. My running challenge is going really good too. It is over 3 weeks into the challenge and I have run 22 times in 24 days. I have a 2-a-day planned later this week so I'll only be down by one run at the end of 4 weeks.

Coaching is going great. The kids had their first meet a few weeks ago and they all swam pretty well considering it was an early season meet. They have a pretty hard set planned for today with 6 x 200 FAST!!! And tomorrow they have a 5,000 straight swim. Good thing I'm not swimming with them right now, ha.

Fantasy Football is as exciting as ever and I'm in first place in my division. I am playing the guy that I'm tied with in my division this weekend so there is a lot on the line.

I may have a new favorite show that is called "White Collar" which comes on USA on Friday night. It's pretty good.

And having an American win the NYC marathon this past weekend was also awesome. Congrats to Meb for the big W.

Tony