A week of vacations, sunny days, water days and lots of activity. Laughing moments with friends and family that make everyone happy and ready for things to come. Every training day that goes by gets harder and finding time to train gets complicated. Days start very early in the morning, with my kids and I enjoying hours full of activities such as water skiing, swimming, and hours and hours on the beach, jogging and surfing hundreds of waves. Night hours get long too, there is a difference between now and when they were small, because then,  after 9pm there was no way they would be awake but now, nine comes and then ten and eleven o clock comes and they are still enjoying their vacations and I enjoy watching them happy but also I´m counting the hours that I will sleep before my alarm rings, telling me it is time to train… When I hear the alarm at 6am my body doesn’t react, I am so tired that it takes me a lot of time to wake up and get ready to go and swim. I have done this every day and when I finally dive into the water and start swimming, even though my shoulders are heavy and I still feel a bit soar from all the activity I have had in the week, stroke by stroke I feel better and I smile, a big smile that shows that I am proud of myself for being in the water swimming even though it is vacation time. I have said it before and I have thought about it these days: training doesn’t know the word “vacation”. 

Very soon, August 18th,  will come and I will be ready for Ederle Swim, 18 miles from Battery Park, Manhattan to Sandy Hook, New Jersey and I will surely think of the training days during vacations and I am sure that I will smile full of confidence and strength. I hope it will be like that!