Over the Holidays  

Christmas represents a prime opportunity for two things.

1. Increase or build on your current fitness level.

OR

2. Blow your current fitness level.

To me, the extended holiday represents a prime opportunity to get some me time, and get in some killer workouts. Even with all the visiting and festivities, as well as time with the kids, with no work in the schedule, 1 or 2 hours a day is not hard to squeeze in..

Even with the overindulgences. For me, the key was to refuse to fall into the F*@K-IT mode, and blow off activities because I was already eating and drinking too much. The way I looked at it, even if I was consuming too much, I would be far better off with some intense training sessions under my belt than without.

So over the holidays, I failed to stay off the toxic mixture of fermented grape refined sugar, trans fat soaked potato snacks, turkey and ham. Truth is, I didn’t really try that hard to refrain. It was Christmas afterall.

I did however, manage to stay fairly active. With a full week off, it was not hard scheduling in good solid training sessions.

Looking back, my 10 days looked like this. 4 dryland sessions, combining p90X workouts with my wife’s new workout videos, and included 2 core sessions. 4 solid swim sessions, although I missed 2 masters workouts, I dragged my ass to the lunch or morning sessions and did a couple of easy days of drills, and then a hard day with about 2500 yards of timed 100s, and some extended STROKE (Any stroke but Free) sets. I even managed a good 1.5 hour ride on my mountain bike, in the freezing cold, on a hilly course.

I am now ready to fall back into a routine. As tough as it was to get to work this week, it was good to be back on a schedule. So here is planning a good winter, and successful summer racing season.