Super Senior Year Winter Break

My first and last grad school Winter Break!

T-101 days to Collegiate Nationals in Tuscaloosa!!!!!

I’m currently sitting on the airplane on my way back to Hoboken right now and I wanted to take the opportunity to write a bit about my break. This is the first time since I was a Senior in high school that I’ve had a real winter break all to myself. Because of swimming in college, I had to go back to school a couple days before New Year’s Eve to start swimming again and that always left me with just about 10 days at home. Now that I’m not stuck to the confines of collegiate swimming, this year I was home for a full month and it was awesome!

Below is a quick recap of everything that went down.

In my previous posts, you read about my trip to Mammoth, my first Half Marathon, and my day at the beach. You can click those links to get there if you want more details : )

Most, but not all, of the following statistics are from the last 3 weeks of break. This is because that first week I was home, I went in to the Felt office the whole week and didn’t have much time to work out because I was catching up with work stuff. Not to mention, the post-work darkness that consumed the skies was in no way motivating me to work out. A few of the runs and lifting sessions at the gym happened during that lull time.

Swimming

9.42 hours of swimming

30,000 yards which is about 17 miles

Mission Viejo Nadadores Masters. My favorite swim practices.
On New Year's Day we did 55x100's. That was fun!
Nothing else really to say except I loved seeing all my Noon practice friends and swimming in the sun again : ) I definitely got my one-piece tan back.

Biking

25 hours

A little under 400 miles

Sooooo stoked I was able to bike this much. The second ride back was so much fun because I went down to San Diego to ride around there with Rachel. It was great to ride with her on their tri team’s “long ride” loop and have her show me around her UCSD stomping ground!

I got quite a few long bikes in on my own and was even able to do a couple with the legendary Jordan Bethke of Cal Berkeley as well. He graciously let me tag along and we went down to the coast on PCH in Laguna and back up towards Saddleback Mtn. Those were some solid rides. And I was lucky enough to convince my Dad to ride with me a couple times on the Bake-to-Cook’s loop as well.

Definitely not looking forward to bundling up for the rest of my rides leading up to Tuscaloosa. Riding in shorts and just my bike jersey was so nice.

Running

17.25 hours

106 miles

Woah. That was a lot of running for me. The most notable runs were my track workout with my Mom at Saddleback College, the 12-mile sunset run on New Year’s Eve, the Half Marathon, and the couple high-altitude runs in Mammoth. Hopefully it all pays off!

Other

Other activities of the break at home included:

P90x Plyo and Ab RipperX

Did this a couple times before work and with Garrison in Mammoth.

Do you think you’re in shape? If you think you are, do P90X at 8,000+ feet of elevation. It’s quite a blow to your ego haha. I felt like an out-of-shape slob who couldn’t breathe when we did it.

Lifting

The LA Fitness right across the street from my house just opened while I was at school. So I renewed my membership for Dec and Jan and Garrison got me lifting again. It hurt like hell the first time and then it was great to get back into it. After just a couple times I could already feel the difference while swimming.

Snowboarding

Went twice while we were in Mammoth!

It had been a couple years since the last time I snowboarded because stupid swim schedules never allowed me the time. It was quite refreshing to get up on the mountain again.

Surfing

Oh what fun it was to surf again!

Nothing like the feeling of catching a wave and getting up on it.

It’s seriously a religious experience, I swear.

Only a few hours away from the hustle and bustle of Hoboken!

Farewell to the sunshine : (

See you soon, California!