Numerical Vanity

A few days before Christmas, I looked with consternation at my training totals. I'd trained hard for my Ironman year of '10 and there was no way I was going to catch my cycling totals for '11. However I was already almost 100 miles ahead on my running. So that left my swimming as the tie breaker. At the time, I had only ~112,000 yds and needed another 26,000 yds to pass last year. Could I do it? I had a shoulder injury in early Fall which put me farther and farther behind. But it was better now... still, that'd require 4,000 yds every day this past week to accomplish. It's now Jan 1, and I can say "mission accomplished". With 1800 yds Dec 24, and then 4,000 avg/day through Friday, I needed just 3100 yds on Sunday Dec 31 to hit 140,000 yds for the year and comfortably set the bar for the coming year. Got it done, with no injury aggravation to the shoulder, just a little bit of a sore neck from all the side breathing. No problemo.