Swimming: 4600 yards, & I Feel Better.

We've been training pretty steadily for the Swim Across the Sound for the past two months or so.  That is, me and a few of my teammates from the Army Swim Team back in the day.  We've all been training and trading workouts, trying to keep each other motivated and on point.  I'm still not sure who all is going to show up for the event, but it's been good for me personally.  I mean, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn in saying that I miss my teammates--and that I like having an excuse to talk swimming with them.

Amongst the things I've learned is that a couple of my teammates are absolutely kicking my ass right now.  And that's fine, really.  But it's pushed me to work harder, and somewhere along the way, I developed a bit of tendinitis in my elbows.  Probably more from lifting weights than from swimming, but I can definitely feel it when I swim, and that sucks a lot.

Alas, my travel schedule made it hard to take time off from weights--I was on the road, and they had a weight room but no pool--so I tried to push through, but as that sounds stupid right on its face, I--of course--just made the problem worse.  Even a Rest Week didn't help.  By this past Tuesday, when I put in a meager 3100 yards in the pool, it was obvious that I was gonna have to take some legitimate time off from lifting if I wanted to avoid a real injury.  Hopefully that'll be enough.

The upside is that I actually felt good in the water today.  I'd hoped that I could lift and swim, that my metabolism would eventually speed up enough to allow me to do both--hard--and recover completely afterwards, but that hasn't happened.  Instead, I've just been slow and sore and hurt.  Seeing a chiropractor has helped, but even with that, I've not been where I wanted to be, especially in the water.  However with a week's break from the weight room, I actually had a little pop in the pool today, and that was quite an improvement.

Today's workout was as follows:

Warm-Up
4 x 200 easy @ 3:15
200 kick (fly/breast by 50s)
10 x 50 @ :45, breathing every 3rd

Main Set (x3)
300 free @ 4:15 aerobic pace
3 x 100 @ 1:30 tempo
:45 rest

3 x 100 kick @ 1:50 (fly)
50 easy

400 pull
50 easy

4 x 100 descending @ 1:40
 -- 75 aerobic / 25 fast
 -- 50 aerobic / 50 fast
 -- 25 aerobic / 75 fast
 -- 100 fast

100 easy cool down

Total: 4600 yards

I kept all three 300s well under 3:55 in the main set, good for a average of around 1:18/100.  I then descended through the tempo 100s, going about 1:15, 1:14, 1:12 all three times.  None of that was exactly blazing, but it didn't suck, either, and it's a good sign that I was able to keep that same consistent pace/consistent effort thru the entire set.  I hadn't previously been able to do that.

I got down to 1:09 on the last set.  That's still not showing as much straight-up speed as I might prefer, but for the end of a long workout, it's okay.

For better or worse, I seem to have decent endurance but not much raw power except in butterfly.  That's always been true to an extent, but it's even more pronounced now than it was.  Or else I'm just more conscious of it now that I'm again trading workouts with my buddies.  Either way, more speed work is in order, though I also need to keep putting in long workouts, too.