Re-rejiggered

Basta has been bitching loud and long this week about being tired.

It makes sense that he would be tired. This is his heaviest week to date. He's sticking to the schedule, too, so he's really putting in the hours. Since he didn't do the hours last week, this is an especially hard week.

He's also in the muscle-build phase of his weight training, so his muscles are sore. His shoulders, in particular.

Poor Basta.

He's not injured, so I'm pushing him to do the time and do the intensity, too. He can rest next week.

But that means he has to actually rest next week. So an easy week, as previously scheduled, it will be. Short hours, only 8.5. Easy intensity. Let him recover. Let the bygones of the poorly done week last week be bygones.

We'll be in Florida next week, too. That will make getting the training hours done more difficult, of course, but since it's an easy week that should work out better than it did in Napa. No biking will occur, but he can run and swim. He can swim in the Atlantic, even, and get some sighting and nonstop-swimming practice done. It should be a good week.

He continues to amaze me with how well he can follow direction. He's the kind of athlete every coach wants. You tell him to run 40 minutes with 1/3 intervals, he runs for 40 minutes doing 1/3 intervals. He may grouse about it beforehand, but that's to be expected. Afterwards he's happy with his performance. Today he nailed 5:15, consistently, in his 1-minute sprints. I'm really happy with that.

I went to the pool with him this morning. He's rolling his body through the water quite well now. He's breathing bilaterally nicely. No more neck pain. His shoulders are sore so he's not pulling as hard, so he was pretty slow. But he looked good. Except for his stroke. He was pulling his arm out of the water too soon and missing the entire glide/follow-through part of the stroke. I took video. We'll work on that.