Yesterday was my day off and it was glorious. My brain actually wanted to train, which was a new experience, but I let my body rest completely. I knew that I was entering week two of training and I didn’t want to hit a wall.

Today I swam and I struggled. This sucked. Last week I swam 200m without stopping, and I was pretty sure that no one had ever swam this far. In my mind, I was the pinnacle of swimming perfection. In this deluded fantasy Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte were fighting over my hand in marriage because of how far I could effortlessly swim. Now, I know that 200m is just about as short as it gets, but for me, this was a huge accomplishment. Naturally, since I did this with no problem last week, I was certain that today I would easily be swimming 400m with no problem. Not the case. I struggled to get through the 200m swim today. I guess it was partially just fatigue from working out so consistently over the last week and partially from making adjustments to my technique. I’m definitely pulling more now instead of relying solely on my kick. This is a big improvement on my technique, particularly for a triathlon. I also realized quickly last week that I was a one sided breather and that I needed to breath equally on each side. This has also improved. Today I focused on fully breathing out while under the water so that I would be actually refilling my lungs when I breath. This is also an adjustment to my technique. So, I guess that even though I struggled with endurance, I am making technical strides that will pay off in the long run. This is something to celebrate.

On a side note, I’ve been doing much of my swimming at the Astoria Sports Complex. This gym draws quite the crowd. Today there were two, ahem, *older* ladies in the lane next to me. I’m not sure what they were actually doing in the water, because they never moved from the wall, but they were wearing floral print shower caps, so I didn’t complain. What’s not to love about a, ahem *more seasoned* swimmer in a floral shower cap. They did, however, begin to take out their dentures and compare denture glues. Yep. Astoria Sports Complex: Harboring Denture Bacteria since 2012. Training for a triathlon is seriously dangerous work.