I bagged swimming outside this morning, & it looks like I might bag open water swimming on Sunday, too. It’s gorgeous in Coastal Connecticut this morning, but it’s also 58-degrees with the water at 62. That’s — just barely — doable in a sleeveless wetsuit, but it’s nobody’s idea of fun. I have a thick neoprene cap for mornings like this, and if the pool was closed like it was during the pandemic, I'd have no choice but to tough it out. However. We no longer live in that world, thank God, so I let myself off the hook. Plus, it's supposed to rain Sunday morning, so...
We're trying to be smarter with this, even though I'm not always great at that.
Yours truly during the 2019 Swim Across the Sound.
I should say, too, that I woke up this morning sore as all Hell. I've been locked in this cycle of strong delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and it's messing with me. To be clear, DOMS is not weird or unusual for athletes, it's just new and weird *for me*.
So. DOMS is that thing where you lift on Monday but don't feel sore until Wednesday or Thursday. In my case, I benched hard on Tuesday and then woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. Of course, I also swam hard yesterday and then did pull-downs and curls in the weight room, so that maybe had something to do with it, but this stuff is cumulative. Which means it's liable to hit me even harder tomorrow, and I have to put in a long swim tomorrow or Sunday, so...
Recovery is also a thing. In fact, it matters quite a bit.
I was always going to have to up my swimming and back down in the weight room as we approached the Swim Across the Sound. Well, I started upping my yardage over the last few weeks, but I didn't really back down in the gym until yesterday. I've been doing fewer total movements in the weight room, but more reps. Tuesday, for example, I did 5 sets of DB Military Press and 4 sets on the Bench, but after swimming 3400 yards, that was MOST of my total weight work, and I've been benching more and harder than I have in years. I then swam pretty well yesterday but ran out of gas afterwards. So I finally backed down deliberately yesterday (with pull-downs and curls), but by then it was too late. Last night rolled around, and my shoulders got all twitchy to the point that I couldn't get comfortable. As I said, I therefore decided not to push it this morning. Hopefully, that is a sign of maturity and not simple emotional weakness about getting into cold water.
The good news is that I'm swimming more and better -- finally. My typical workouts earlier in the year were around 2500 yards with long workouts in the 3500 to 4000 yard range. Typical workouts now range between 3000 and 3500 yards with long workouts in the 5000 yard range. A mile is 1760 yards, so my typical workouts are up to about 2 miles with long workouts approaching 3 miles.
This is not an accident. My favorite open water swim course is about 3.2 miles, and I'll probably wind up swimming between 6000 and 7000 yards total during the Swim Across the Sound.
Easy thing to do as a teenager. Much more challenging at age 49. And that's before we consider what it's like to swim that distance FAST.
More from the 2019 Swim Across the Sound
My last note is that I weighed in after my workout yesterday at 199. I started this little journey at about 205, and if we assume that I was around 15% bodyfat at that point, then I'm probably down to between 12% and 12.5% right now. You can totally see the difference. So yay!
Thanks for reading this, and thanks for your support with the Swim. As I've noted many times, this is a great cause that helps real people in need.
Help us BEAT CANCER!!!
--Dan
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