Chicago bound

It's our coach Jimi's birthday tomorrow and he says he has a special Jimi Flowers birthday workout for us tomorrow so I'm a bit nervous as to what it entails. But whatever it is, it will be OK, since after practice tomorrow I am going back to Chicago for 2 WHOLE days of no swimming. Whatever am I going to do???
Jimi is giving our whole team the weekend off to go home a last time before we go to Beijing and has given us strict instructions NOT to swim. It will be a much needed break to let my muscles rest as I was beginning to think they were getting over worked this week.
This won't be the last time I go home, as I get a special trip to Chicago to see Dick one last time in a few weeks so that will be nice. This is the first time either Dick or I will be back to our house in Chicago for 2.5 months so hopefully everything is still in place. We had a friend checking in on it and we've had nothing unusual mentioned so hopefully that is the case.

This week went pretty good. Practice was especially hard all week and I doubt tomorrow will be much better. Today we did the dreaded 6 100 sprints as fast as we can from the block. We did these before trials as well, each week doing one less and as much as they hurt they give us a good idea as to where our times are. If we are getting good times here in practice, then it's left to the imagination as to how much more time we can drop when we are rested, shaved, tapered, etc...and the imagination can drop lots of seconds. My 100's were OK this time around, nothing spectacular. However, this week I did have the best and the worst practices that I have had in months. Both encouraging and discouraging but I try to put the latter one out of my mind...I mean everyone can have a bad practice every now and then right??

As I mentioned before, this week was the week of interviews. NBC, EPSN and MTV today. I'm not sure when they are all to air but I will keep you posted. As I know, Lou DObbs is still scheduled for tomorrow night but we'll see about that.

We just got back from a lovely dinner at the Stockwell household with Dick's parents and extended family. I have thouroughly enjoyed my time here in CO and getting to see Dick's family as much as I have as they are always a fun group to be around. They spoil me with all sorts of food and treats that I shouldn't be eating. Unfortunately when it comes to sweets and any sort of chocolate I lack the willpower to say no.

It is late and i need to get to bed now. Jimi's secret practice starts an hour earlier tomorrow meaning that the alarm will go off at 5:09 instead of 6:09 so it's bedtime for me.
Have a great weekend!

Oh and this picture in the upper right is a cool picture that was taken by the militarytimes.com people. It's one of my favorites...