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Good job on the swimming. I love to swim I had my fastest marathon when I was swimming regularly. It is such a good break from the pounding. Plus as an extra I get to get in the hot tub.

Thanks, Josse! My mom said I will be able to shave a lot of time off of my swimming the more I do it. Plus, since I haven't swam in about 4 years, I don't know how to do the 'flip turn'. So I just stop every 25 meters, turn and push off again. I was told by her that this significantly slows my swim time down. I'm hoping to get better at it though. I am crossing my fingers that it helps me maintain fitness. Because I will be sorely disappointed if I bonk out of the race on June 1st.

I can't flip turn either, when ever I try I bonk my head on the bottom of the pool. I am lucky to have a 50 meter pool to do laps in.

Anything is going to help, my experience with crosstraining is, of course, it is not the same as running, But you can get back into running faster and easier if you do it. I really recommend finding an indoor bike you can use, one that you can do standing repeats on. You can pool run as well. You just need a waist flotation devise and do it in the deep end. I always try to just simulate real running but it usaully just turn into a bicycle motion. But it will help.

Don't do any crosstraining that aggrivates the injury.

Benn,

The swimming actually sounds fun, too bad I'm no good at it! Glad that things are healing up and you have found some crosstraing to do! I admire your determination! Love the "cute" new pic ! It's so fun to get to know people better on the blog through the pics that they post!

Excellent swimming. You swim as fast, or faster than me, after four years off as I do when I swim everyday.

nice job with the swimming!! Last year Paula and I thought about doing a triathalon. I head out to my pool and swam for a while. I then realized that how many laps I would have to swim and gave up. I did notice however that while we swim for fun all summer, my overall fitness is better. Right now I keep telling my husband- "take the cover off and we can ice skate" He doesn't think is so funny.

Benn,

Having had achilles tendonitis, I have a sense of what you are experiencing. When it was bad enough that I could not run, I took 1-2 hour walks. While walking does not give a good cardio workout, it does keep the body in tune to the movement which is similar to running, and for me it did not cause any pain in the achilles. I would test the achilles every other day with a run. When it would begin to hurt I would immediately stop running and finish the session by walking. I cured the tendonitis by discovering that the proper days off from running in my case was 4 days. Every 4th day I would go for a run. I would run for 10 minutes, would feel the achilles get tense, and walk the rest of the way. 4 days later I would test it again with a run, this time I could run 15 minutes before having to walk. 4 days later I was able to run 20 minutes before walking. Every 4th day saw an approximate 5 minute increase in time spent running. When I hit 55 minutes of running the tendonitis magically disappeared, and I was able to run as far as I wanted without it returning. Not sure if this will work for you, but I think the lesson here is to continually use your imagination and determination until finding the proper way to heal it. Resting it completely may very well work, so good luck in your quest to heal it!