A (foot) cramp in my style

Crampy foot.

First off, sorry I haven't been around here lately. I know you're DYING to hear about every single detail of my life. After the shitshow that was last week, I decided to go easy on myself this week and be satisfied with one thing per day. So far the week has gone swim, run, bike, play hooky to watch a movie (Hail Caesar) with my husband, and swim again. No weights, no pre-hab, nothing else... but I haven't had a nervous breakdown yet, so that's something.

I was excited to do another swim last night. We were sent home from work early so I took a nap, made an early dinner, and caught up on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia before heading to the pool. I zipped through my warmup and drills and was feeling fast and strong in the water. I wanted to do longer sets on longer rest, so I was planning a main set of 10 x 200 on the 4:45, which started out with 0:20-ish rest for the first couple, but by the end was down to 0:35-0:40 rest. I felt like I was waiting SOOOOO LOOOONG, but you can't argue with the fact that my repeats were getting faster.

And then, it happened again. Foot cramp!!! With two repeats left to go, bound and determined to see a 3:59 (which might have been my fastest 200 meters ever), my left foot cramped so badly I had to stop and try to stretch it out in the deep end. It wasn't going anywhere. I sculled back to start, got out, and limped to the showers. GRRRRRRRRR!

This has happened a couple of times already this training cycle (December, February) and I'm not sure what I'm doing different lately. Yes, I am swimming in the evening now, and since I'm not half asleep, I like to think I'm swimming harder. I do drink a lot of coffee (although I am trying to put a hard stop at noon) so maybe I am dehydrated. When I swim in the evenings it's after dinner has digested, so I don't eat a banana before I swim like I do in the mornings. Could it be one of those reasons? Something else?

All I know is this is getting to be a ... wait for it ... pain in the foot. Hopefully I can get this figured out before summer training kicks (ba-dum tiss) into high gear.