Eileen Swanson's Tales

Yay, I had a great swim workout today. I had been feeling a bit sluggish in the water lately, but today it all felt great. I am super tired though. Practice starts at 5AM, so I was up and ready to go by 4:30AM, unfortunately I had a late night so I am moving on 5 1/2 hours of sleep. No biggie, I can get through the day knowing that I am going to get in 10 hours of sleep tonight Yippee!

Ok, so I get to practice, get in a lane with 2 girls that I used to be scared to swim with since they were alot faster than me last year. Everyone is super competitive and at 5AM you have to watch what you say or joke about with some of the people. HA! So, I quietly and nicely asked if I could lead the lane. Yes, me, that is correct! I decided to not let fear get in the way. I was going to lead and I was going to make each interval. So, the girls said sure, go for it. Our set consisted of 8 x (1 x 100 on 1:15, followed by 1 x 75 on 1:15). Off we went and I felt smooth and strong. I hit the wall on the first 100 at 1.06. I was stoked, I felt like I could go on 1.10. But I knew this would really mess everyone up and I would for sure lose some friends So I stayed with the 1.15 interval and it felt easy. On each 100 I made sure to get to the wall under 1.10, which I was able to do and feel good. This is definitely an improvement for me this season and I am happy to say that I am only swimming 2-3 days a week for the past 8 weeks. Coach is just starting to bump me up to 3-4 days right now. So it will all be fun to see more improvements, hopefully!

Ok, next workout I will push for the 1.10 send off. Will keep you posted on my progress. Thanks to all of you for helping me let go of my fears and JUST GO FOR IT!

Believe in yourself!!

E

FYI – the pic has nothing to do with this blog I have a suit that is in its early stages of being designed. I saw the rough draft yesterday and I was so in awe! I am so happy to tell you all that the creative designer is Mel C. You all know Mel (http://thecrazyworldofmel.blogspot.com/). She is awesome at creating Splish suits and other designs. And she is such a sweet, cool, and patient person. You see it’s not so simple. I asked Mel for some help, she was quick to say yes and then of course a bunch of crazy stuff came up. Oops!

Last night, Reid, Belle and I went for a little drive over to a trail which surrounds a small lake. Belle absolutely LOVES to swim. She is in fact the best swimmer in our family, for her age and size HA! Seriously, she is amazing in the water. Labs just dive right in and start swimming from the time they are pups. Belle is now 14 months old, so she is a veteran of the lakes and beaches in CA. We take her everywhere!

Well, we thought we would just go for a nice walk on the trail and avoid having Belle get in the lake. She was having fun, running, jumping, leaping all over the place. She was super excited to be close to water. We had just had a major CA storm, so everything was wet and muddy, which is just fine for B. She is such a happy pup! As I started to tell Reid how fun this walk was, and how well behaved our pup is, and how she wouldn’t get in the water without one of us giving her the command, Belle takes off straight for the lake, FULL SPEED AHEAD, in hopes to catch a duck! Yikes! I was in mid-sentence when she took off. So Reid yells her name and it was too late, she was bounding through the shallow water at a high speed, aiming right at a bunch of ducks. All I could here was quack, quack, splish, splash, and Reid yelling “Belle come. ” Wow, serious excitement on a Sunday evening!!

Belle nearly caught a couple of ducks, but luckily they flew away just in time. As soon as she lost eye contact with her prey, she looked at Reid and swam super fast towards him and jumped out of the water and ran up the hill and sat right next him giving him this look like “WHAT, dad? That was fun.” HAHA! Super cute, how could you punish her then. Oh well, at least we all had fun and excitement last night! Belle definitely had a good nights sleep!

Have a great Monday!

E

It’s really amazing how quickly we can forget the positive things in life when we are faced with tough times. Today I had a couple tough challenges thrown my way and instead of remembering my recent post about being positive, I became frustrated and annoyed. At work, a team member was let go and I was given his responsibility plus my normal job duties. This is huge, lots of work for me. Also a sponsor who said I was going to “be extremely happy with the offer I would be receiving” basically left me with little to be happy about. I will leave it at that. This made me start doubting myself again. Thinking that I was not good enough, that I was slow, etc. Dumb thoughts, right? So I started venting to a good friend of mine on email and she came right back with the best answer that made me start thinking positively again.

“E, belive in yourself. NO MORE NEGATIVITY! You are good and you know it. You have to know it I know it. ” W

So I read it and thought – what the heck was I thinking, I just posted something that said “Believe, Conquer, Live life to its fullest, be happy.” Wow, I quickly changed my negative thoughts and started smiling and saying to myself – Believe, smile, life is great! From this moment on, I promised myself that I will do my very best to stay positive and remember how great life is! I can do it, I trust and believe in my abilities. Thanks so much to all of you that helped turn my day around! I love you guys…..

Have an amazing weekend!

E

Yesterday I had a tough but awesome run workout. I had to do fartleks and my goal was to follow my HR and my pace would come along. Lately, I have been struggling with this leg issue, but it is definitely getting better (due to my new Dr who basically puts me through torture sessions to release the tightness in my hip and glute). Because of this leg issue, I have been conservative in my tempo runs and track sessions. Not good. I would start out slow in hopes that my leg would be ok for the duration of the workout. I would hold back and run too slow but I really couldn’t push too hard in the beginning of a speed session or my leg would act up. This workout would be a different story, a new beginning.

I started out feeling good and told myself that today would be the day that I would overcome my fear of the unknown. I would push myself to a new level and see what happens. I would not be scared to blow up, fly off the treadmill, or worry that my leg would have issues. I would just go for it, all the way, all out, and see what happens. I was determined to run a pace that I am capable of running, one that I would feel like I was flying! I know I have it in me, I did at one time and somehow with all my fears it was lost. But not this time, during this session. I was going to do it, I was going to go to the place that I had long lost.

As I started my speed intervals, I went for it. I cleared my mind of all my fears and focused on simply going FAST! By the time I hit interval number 4, I was on fire, feeling great, running fast, getting down to a pace that I knew I could get down to – WOW what an amazing feeling. I let go of my fears and I got there, I was flying

Conquer your fears, believe, dream, you can do it!

E

It’s been a challenging day with work, the commute to and from work, coaching 9 athletes, and trying to get in all of my training. Oh and trying to be the best wife and mom to (my yellow lab Belle) This evening, as I sat in traffic with Reid (yes luckily we commute together) I was thinking this was really tough, stressful, and not what I wanted to be doing. But in that same thought I caught myself and remembered to think positive thoughts. This is not so bad. I have what I want – a loving husband, great family, great pup, a nice home, and I am healthy and able to do the sport I love. I realized that I am very lucky and I need to appreciate life and be happy.

Lesson learned today – look around, appreciate what you have, smile, laugh, be happy. Life is precious, live it to its fullest!

Enjoy your day, have a beautiful one!

E

What a beautiful day in California! We hit 68 degrees I had a swim and run workout scheduled for today. I decided to head over to my old master’s swim program in the AM to do their long course workout. I absolutely love it when the pool is set-up long ways! It was awesome to see some of my old friends and meet some new people. One guy that I met was a 58 year old national caliber swimmer, named Zac. He was very quiet, stern and probably really annoyed that I was really happy, gabby, and so excited to see my old buddies. Well, it was all cool until we started the main set.

Zac decided that he HAD to lead our lane. He was new to the program, but just thought he was faster than the rest of us! It was kind of funny, we all thought “no worries” let’s see how it goes. Our first set consisted of 200IM, 8 x 50s kick, 200IM X 3. Zac was doing just fine and looking pretty darn fast during the first round of the set. As we got to the kick set, he started fading a bit and I of course do a combination of kick, use my arms, kick, etc….you get the point. So I start inching up on Zac, closing in and decide to pass him. Big mistake. Not only did he not like anyone attempting to pass him, he really didn’t like a girl passing him. So funny! I made my pass, felt him speed up tons, as I did too. When we got to the wall after the kick set, he didnt even ask, he immediatley pushed off the wall in front of all us to start the IM set. HAHAHAHA! Luckily there weren’t any other big ego’s in the pool, and everyone thought it was as funny as I did. We just let him have his glory for the day. I guess that was best for all. I’m sure he felt really good!

Have an awesome night!

E

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love this day. It is a day where we can all think about love and who we love and how much we love them. Today upon arriving at work, I had a beautiful bouquet of my favorite color roses on my desk. They are so beautiful and smell so good. Being a semi-newlywed (2 years and 10 months), I realized today that everyday with my amazing husband, Reid, is Valentine’s day. We are very fortunate to both be triathletes who just love to train, race and do just about everything together. Of course at times we have our disagreements and we are not always super sweet to one another, but I can say that our little disagreements last all but 5 mins. Then we are both over it and again are fully back to normal. I love this about our relationship.

After my late night swim practice (yes BW I made it there), I came home to find a candle light dinner set for the 2 of us! Reid cooked, picked out my favorite fish, salad, and rice and it was all soooo delicious! What an awesome husband, I love him…….

Have a great one,

E

I was pumped all day to do this Time Trial workout that my coach prescribed. All I could think about while sitting on my butt all day at work was how cool it was going to be to push myself so hard tonight and see how much I may have improved in 6 weeks. Well it all seemed perfectly worked out, Reid and I would leave work at a set hour, get home, get ready and roll out. Well, not so quick.

We were late in leaving work, things came up last minute, projects, conference calls, all that fun stuff! Yeah right! So, we thought we still may be able to make it out. I was starting to get nervous on the drive home as it was SUPER WINDY and getting late, AND mostly because I really wanted to get this TT in. We got home, rushed, changed, put the bikes in the car as it would be faster to drive out to our TT location, than ride there. We got to our TT locale only to find the winds gusting at 45+mph (no joke, just saw it on the news), and traffic so jammed that it would make our ride unsafe, not to mention that it was getting dark.

We still got out of the car, got our bikes ready and tried to start riding. Of course even in the few seconds that we started to ride, we were already being blown all over the place. Reid and I made an executive decision and decided this was not going to be our day to do a TT. I was super bummed. But instead of freaking out like I would have normally done, I again thought of my coach’s words of wisdom – “it is ok to change a workout, as a pro you should be able to easily adapt to any change.” I did, and we drove back home and did an awesome trainer TT! Although I did not get to see how much I may have improved on the road, I am happy to say that this “changed” workout was even harder than the road version. Cool!

Have a great one,

E