Swimming: 1 Week (10K Yards)

I finally hit my stride in the water yesterday.  I felt like I actually had my good stuff.  I felt like myself out there.  That's become so rare since turning forty that those workouts are like tiny miracles.

The reasons aren't exactly mysterious.  I got decent sleep over the weekend, ate breakfast Sunday morning, swam three times this week overall, and stretched for about ten minutes before hitting the water Sunday afternoon.

So, y'know, of course I felt good.

But still, it doesn't happen like that most days.  I don't want to take it for granted.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Spot the pattern.

Tuesday
2 x (2 x 200 free @ 3:00; 100 kick)
10 x 50 @ :45, breathing every 3rd

10 x 200 free @ 2:50 -- aerobic pace

100 easy cool down

When I say "aerobic" pace here, I mean that literally.  I took my heart rate after each of the first six intervals during the main set and very carefully held my pulse between 140 and 145 bpm.  After that I started to get tired, and these became a surprisingly hard slog.  The upside of that, though, was that I didn't have to concentrate to hold a constant effort level.  I was locked in at ~2:39/200.

I kind of thought I'd speed up as I got going during the set, owing to my heart's volume increasing.  That's not what happened, alas.  Obviously, my upper body muscular endurance still needs some work.

Good set, though.  Just harder than I expected.  Kind of like doing a five-mile run with a heart-rate monitor but still struggling to maintain form through the last two miles.


Saturday
5 x 200 free @ 3:00
200 kick
10 x 50 @ :45, breathing every 3rd

3 x 200 @ 2:50 -- 85%
100 kick
3 x 200 @ 2:45 -- 85%
100 kick
3 x 200 @ 2:40 -- 85%
100 kick

100 easy cool down

This was a variation on what I did Tuesday.  Instead of grinding through 10 x 200, I broke it up into three sets of three separated by a 100 kick.  I wanted to see the impact a little extra rest would have on my form.

A significant impact, as it turns out.  Not only did I do the set on faster intervals, I went harder and swam faster overall.  The last set was a challenge, but it probably wasn't as bad as the end of Tuesday's set had been.  I held ~2:35/200 overall and came out of the water feeling good.

Weird, right?


Sunday
2 x (4 x 100 free @ 1:30; 100 kick)
10 x 50 @ :45, breathing every 3rd

400 free @ 5:40 -- tempo
100 kick
4 x 100 @ 1:25 -- fast

100 easy cool down

As I said in the opening, I had my good stuff yesterday.  My 400 free was just over five minutes (maybe 5:03, just under 1:16/100), and I kept all four of my final 100s between 1:10 and 1:12.  That's way under the pace I'd carried through all those 200s earlier in the week.

Not bad, overall.  For reference, this is about where I was in 7th grade, though I'm swimming way less per week and doing way, way less butterfly.

I've got one more workout later this morning.  It's the Monday of a three-day weekend.  I'll probably go about 3000 yards, and yeah, I might actually do some of that stroke work today.


Skiing vs. Swimming
I feel like I have something of a dilemma now.  It's still Ski Season -- it's February, at least, though we've had so little snow that it hardly feels like winter out there -- but that's a pain in the ass because I'm already swimming reasonably well.  That takes so much effort that I hate to give it up.  But that means potentially letting the rest of the ski season go, and that feels crazy.

Not sure how I'm going to handle it.  Not having enough time for all of one's hobbies is a decided First World Problem, but this one is frustrating because the effort involved is quite real.