A Good Week in Disguise

By Saturday afternoon, I had decided the week was a disappointment.

I had only swum twice. My lone run had been miserable. Work travel consumed two days, and another flare-up in my back followed me home from Houston.

Then I started counting.

I was sitting on the couch, working on the previous week’s blog post and feeling as though I had officially entered a rut. The week before contained eight workouts, down from four consecutive weeks averaging more than ten. This week had produced only five, with less than two days remaining.

I looked at the spreadsheet and saw guilt, anxiety, and disappointment.

Eleven workouts in a week had shown me what was possible. Now anything less felt as though I had failed to reach a standard I’d already established.

Chasing my limit is more than a slogan. It’s how I intend to reach the ambitious goals I’ve set for this season. Eight workouts are not my limit. Five certainly are not.

But that didn’t necessarily mean the week had gone poorly.

Going rogue

Monday’s swim was built around butterfly and consisted mostly of short 25s and 50s.

Butterfly isn’t one of my better strokes, and the short repeats weren’t providing the aerobic or sustained speed work I needed before a trip that would limit my opportunities to swim. After an hour, I was still well below my 3,000-yard baseline, and I hadn’t found the intensity I wanted.

With another short butterfly set on the board, I decided to go rogue.

Masters practices are coached, but they’re also flexible. A lane can modify a set as long as everyone agrees and the change doesn’t interfere with the surrounding lanes. I asked the remaining swimmer in my lane if he would be open to finishing with 10 x 100s freestyle on 1:30 instead of the assigned set. He agreed, and a swimmer from the next lane joined us after hearing the suggestion.

The set would add 1,000 yards in 15 minutes and allow each of us to choose our own intensity.

I opened with a :59, held 1:05 or faster through the middle, and finished with a :58. The additional work moved me beyond 3,000 yards and gave the practice a purpose that aligned more closely with my goals.

My target for the 1,000 freestyle will require me to average faster than one minute per 100 yards. If I eventually want to hold that pace ten times without rest, I need to keep placing fast 100s inside ordinary practices.

The change also surprised my coach.

She has known me throughout my five years as a Masters swimmer and has rarely seen me ask for more work or replace part of a workout. I usually follow the plan. The college version of me might even have welcomed an easier practice focused on one of my weaker strokes.

This version recognized that a limited swimming week made Monday more valuable.

Sometimes discipline means following the plan. Sometimes it means understanding the goal well enough to adjust the work.

The hardest two miles

I flew to Houston on Tuesday for a work meeting and a customer event.

After the meeting, I joined colleagues for conversation, dinner, and a Texas-sized steak. Building meaningful relationships at work matters to me. Chasing my athletic limit cannot come at the expense of the career I’m also trying to grow.

We returned to the hotel around 8 p.m. I was full, it was dark, and Houston was still hot and humid. I put on my running shoes anyway.

The residential area around the hotel offered little sidewalk, but I eventually found a local running trail. My stomach began objecting almost immediately. About half a mile into the run, my shins joined the protest.

The pain was some of the worst shin-splint pain I have experienced in years. It felt as though the muscles along the front of my legs were being pulled away from the bone. I dealt with shin splints regularly when I first began running, but they had mostly disappeared as my legs adapted.

That night, they returned with enthusiasm.

I made it one mile away from the hotel, which left me with no choice but to cover another mile to get back. I slowed and walked when necessary. Between my legs and my stomach, I wanted the run to end.

Then my phone rang.

My daughter was getting ready for bed and wanted to talk. With headphones in, I could keep moving while we spoke. She stayed on the phone for the rest of the trip back, offering the kind of encouragement only a ten-year-old superstar runner can provide while also finding it amusing that two miles could be so difficult for her father.

Back at the hotel, I dealt with my stomach and then went to the gym. The air conditioning felt glorious after the Houston night. I completed a careful 20-minute lift while avoiding direct back work.

Neither workout was impressive by itself. Together, they represented a choice I wouldn’t have made a year earlier. I had honored the professional relationships that brought me to Houston, then found a way to honor the personal commitment I brought with me.

What the spreadsheet cannot see

Wednesday didn’t produce a workout I could enter into the tracker.

It did include 18 holes of customer golf, more than four hours in the Houston heat, work conversations, packing, a drive to the airport, and a flight home.

As I finished packing, my lower back seized without warning. No lift or awkward movement triggered it. I had felt fine during golf and while getting ready to leave. Suddenly, the drive to the airport and the flight home became deeply uncomfortable.

I reached Denver around 8 p.m. and arrived home closer to 9. A day that began when I left the hotel at 8 a.m. Central Time ended when I finally reached bed after 10 p.m. Mountain Time.

The spreadsheet recorded a zero.

My body did not.

Our bodies don’t distinguish cleanly between formal workouts and the demands of ordinary life. Travel, golf, heat, yardwork, disrupted sleep, luggage, family activities, and long workdays all contribute to the load we must absorb.

I track the sessions that qualify as exercise. My body tracks everything.

When my alarm sounded Thursday morning, Wednesday’s total load won. I couldn’t get up to swim. I did make it to my home gym that evening for a 30-minute lift, but I went to bed knowing Friday’s swim needed to count.

One last set

Friday gave me my second swim of the week.

I have maintained a minimum of two weekly swims throughout the first 12 weeks, but this would be the second consecutive week in which two were all I managed. I also knew I wouldn’t have another opportunity over the weekend.

Friday practices are intentionally lighter because most teammates have already completed several harder sessions. I missed Tuesday through Thursday, but the team didn’t. My disrupted schedule didn’t make the planned workout wrong.

I completed the practice as written rather than commandeering a second session in the same week. Then I added three hard 100s at the end.

I went :59, 1:01, and 1:00. The additional yardage pushed me to 3,000 for the day and closed my swimming week with work connected directly to my primary goal.

It should have felt like a productive response to a difficult schedule.

Instead, by Saturday, all I could see were two swims.

The scoreboard in my head

My kids had a cross-country meet Saturday morning. My son’s race immediately preceded my daughter’s, so I stayed near the start to help her prepare, then stayed for my son’s awards while my wife handled cheering duty elsewhere on the course.

I didn’t get the quasi-workout I sometimes accumulate by running between viewing points. That was fine. Sometimes my role is to cheer. Sometimes it’s to tie shoes, manage race preparation, and be present for the celebration afterward.

That afternoon, I sat down to work on Post 11.

My internal scoreboard showed two swims, one run, and two lifts. Five workouts. I definitely wasn’t going to reach 11, and even getting to eight seemed unlikely.

But writing about the previous week forced me to examine why an eight-workout week had felt inadequate. That week included work travel, an early flight arranged around swim practice, exercise in a hotel, family events, and eight total sessions. The number alone hadn’t captured the circumstances that produced it.

The same thing was happening again.

The spreadsheet tells me what I did. Writing forces me to confront the meaning I assigned to it.

Before this project, I tracked workouts without truly reflecting on them. Yardage and mileage could show whether I exercised and how much distance I covered. They couldn’t record the daughter who talked me through a terrible run, the work relationships I chose to nurture, the physical toll of a travel day, or the family responsibilities that mattered more than adding another session.

This blog is not merely documenting the journey. It’s changing how I experience it.

That’s also what I want the eventual book to do. This story won’t succeed as a catalog of my workouts. My journey is the example, not the entire point.

Most people trying to become healthier or pursue a difficult goal aren’t free to arrange life around it. They’re fitting ambition around careers, children, relationships, travel, injuries, chores, and everything else that already matters.

We all have limits, but few of us ever chase them closely enough to learn where they are. I believe most of those limits are much farther away than we assume.

Five became eight

The shift in perspective didn’t excuse me from using the time that remained. It reminded me that I still had time to use.

After watching a movie with my family and finishing the previous post, I went to my home gym for a high-intensity 40-minute workout. I avoided back exercises and focused on chest and biceps.

On Sunday, my children wanted to ride their bikes.

We have ridden together before, but those outings usually moved too slowly and covered too little distance to provide much training for me. My children are older now, more athletic, and more experienced on their bikes.

We rode 11 miles on my usual route. The first half climbs steadily and provided a legitimate challenge. The return is mostly downhill and allowed us to maintain speed on tired legs.

We averaged 11 miles per hour. That was slower than my usual 15 to 16, but far beyond the five or six we had averaged together in the past.

For once, I got a meaningful workout without leaving them behind.

After the ride, I completed another 40-minute lift, this time focusing on shoulders and triceps.

Just like that, five workouts became eight.

A good week in disguise

The final total still didn’t tell the whole story.

I had pushed myself during Monday’s swim, exercised after dinner during a work trip, completed two longer and more demanding lifts over the weekend, and turned family time into legitimate training.

I also flew to Houston and back, played 18 holes with a customer, supported my children at a cross-country meet, put up our outdoor Halloween decorations, and blew out the sprinkler system.

It’s easy to forget how much fits into one week when the tracker records only the workouts that count.

Comparing weeks solely by workout totals is a flawed approach. A week at home can contain 11 sessions while demanding less of me overall. A travel week can contain fewer than eight and still bring me close to the limit of what I can responsibly absorb.

If someone else had described this week to me on Saturday afternoon, I would have told them they had done a lot. When I graded my own performance, I saw only what remained undone.

We often judge ourselves against our best recent performance while judging other people within the realities of their circumstances.

Ambition requires high standards. It also requires an honest scoreboard.

Five workouts were not my limit. Eight probably were not either. But the purpose of chasing a limit is not to declare every week inadequate because more might theoretically have been possible.

It’s to keep exploring what is possible without ignoring the full life in which the pursuit must exist.