"Twenty five minutes from now we will still have an
hour left."

When I was in high school we had to deal with block
scheduling which meant that each class lasted 95-100
minutes long (four classes/day until the middle of my
junior year). This one day my buddies and I were
sitting in Mr. Millet's Chemistry class and the day
was moving along exceptionally slowly. I looked up at
the clock and only a pathetic 15 minutes had gone by.
One hour and 25 freakin minutes were left. So since
misery needs company I leaned over to my buddy Clark
and said the quote written above. Nothing could have
been worse for morale at the time.

This led to two years of the same ongoing joke until
graduation. Always trying to one up each other by
pointing out demoralizing facts.

I used the same sort of comic relief while swimming
yesterday. After warming up we were waiting for the
pace clock to hit the top before starting a 4K main
set.

"Just think, only an hour until we're done."

Luckily I enjoy swimming a lot more than Mr. Millet's
class (not to take anything away from Millet. He was a
great teacher and taught a great course, but 100
minutes of any class is a bit much without a break).

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This past week was a pretty good week of training. I
started swimming at St. Leo University outside of Dade
City, Florida last Monday. The National Training
Center in Clermont is currently overhauling the pool
for the month of February so I got the shaft there.
Luckily I met Coach Cyle Sage at the NTC a few weeks
ago and he mentioned he was the XC and swim coach for
a small university called St Leo. The swim program is
in its first year and a number of the athletes are
from the XC team. Sage comes from a swimming and
triathlon background and has worked with the National
Junior Tri Team.

Given the fact that I dont't have a pool to use, I
emailed Sage and asked if I could join his squad. He
said yes and the past week was great. I got to have a
coach on deck to give workouts and Sage has already
helped me in identifying some of my stroke limiters.
Even after the month of February is over I will likely
still head over there once or twice/week. I might go
more often then that if it didn't require me to wake
up at 5:20 and drive almost an hour both ways. That
gets really old, really quickly when I'm training a
lot.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A group of age group triathletes from Atlanta came
down to Clermont this week for a long weekend of
training. They are all IM dudes and they wanted to get
down to some warm weather for uninterrupted training.

Well apparently Mother Nature didn't get the memo
because Clermont got hammered with rain from Thursday
evening to Saturday morning. In fact, on Friday we
even got kicked out of the pool in Orlando... ...the
indoor pool. Nothing like weather so crappy that you
can't even train indoors. Poor guys. Earlier that day
they put in two hours on the Lifecycle machines and
two hours on the treadmill at the NTC. Then they get
kicked out of the pool.

But the Georgia Dawgs wouldn't be stopped and they did
they what they had to do. Its always good to know that
you did what you could no matter what the
circumstances.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blake Becker (www.blakebecker.com) is coming to
Clermont on Wednesday to train with me for the
remainder of the year. A little over a year ago I
contacted Blake asking him about his intentions with
triathlon. From his posts on various triathlon forums,
I got the impression that he was in a similar position
as myself; i.e same age, similar goals, similar
background.

A lot of triathletes my age talk about pursuing this
sport to find their true potentional. Its sexy in
theory, but most folks get distracted and lose their
zeal. Nothing wrong with that by any means. I'm just
trying to point out that there is more talk than
execution (and that probably applies to most things in
life).

But Blake was/is different. I knew he had talent,
drive, work ethic, and a serious amount of passion for
this sport. I suggested that he come train with me
when we was done with school (which just ended a few
weeks ago) since we could certianly use each other's
help (for training, cutting costs, etc). A lot has
happened to him in just the last year and he has stuck
to his goals. He has not taken the easy route and he
knows the path ahead will be even more challenging
than the road he just came down.

Should be a fun season,

__________________________________________________
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