This morning I was awaken by a text on my phone around 4:45am. Thinking that I had forgotten to set my alarm last night I reached for my phone thinking it was my daily weather report text which comes in around 5:10am every day. Reassured that I had at least 15 minutes in my warm bed I rolled over. I think I dozed off for a bit as before I knew it my alarm was going off. it was now 5am and I need to get myself into gear for the 6am workout. But my body said not yet and hit the snooze button. When the alarm went off again it was swim or sleep time. I grabbed my phone and turned off the alarm then slowly got ready for swim. Daylight savings time has made rising so early for practice so much harder as my room is pitch black in the morning when I wake up.
I did make it to the pool and got in the water almost right at 6am. It was too cold to be chatting it up on deck. After my first 100 of the warmup a teammate who forgotten to pack goggles ask me if I had an extra pair. Which I do as I always have 2 extra pairs and sometimes extra suits. Just in case. I hopped out of the very warm water onto the deck and I swear the water on me was freezing as I looked in my bag for the goggles. I ran back into the pool as soon as I could. That was the last time I got out of the water for the entire workout. No pee breaks even during the kick sets. It was that cold.
Warm Up
300 Swim
4x75's Kick Odds 50 kicking on your side with an underwater arm recovery / 25 kick no board on stomach. Evens were 25 kicking no board on stomach / 50 same as the first 50.
4x75's 50 Drill / 25 Swim. Drills - One Arm, 3 Strokes / 3 Kicks on side / 3 Strokes, Finger Tip Drag and Fist. (900)
I like how we are having more structured warmups now. It gives us more time to swim a longer main set. Before it seemed like we warmed up for 40 minutes including a 10 minute anything goes warm up. That anything goes usually meant lots of standing around chatting it up.
300 Pull (200 Breathing 3/5/any/7 and 100 DPS) (300/1200)
100 Swim Distance Per Stroke. 1st 25 Counting Your Strokes (19), 2nd Minus 1 Stroke (17), 3rd Minus 2 (17 again), 4th Back to your original stroke count (21). I really need to work on my DPS. When I do these sets I try to avoid the cheating that can include super long underwater or really stretched out strokes with extra kicking almost like doing swordfish. (100/1300)
Main Set:
4x400's Descending As Follows
1st 400 Swim on 5:15. I did a 4:53.
2nd 400 Split into 2x200's taking 15 seconds rest between each 200. The 400 interval was 5:30. I did a 4:53 again.
3rd 400 Split into 4x100's taking 10 seconds rest between each 100. The 400 interval was 5:45. I did a 4:46.
4th 400 Swim. I did a 4:40.
I felt good during the last 400 but I could have gone a bit faster on the end. The water was warm and I was just sorta slowing up at the walls and lazily flipping at my turns. When I get warm in the water the turns are the first thing to go. I don't feel like extending the energy at the wall I just want to take a quick rest in motion. (1600/2900)
50 easy. (50/2950)
10x50's on 50. Working the turns and underwater streamline. Coming up between the flags and the black line (15 yard mark). I was so beat from the 4x400's I took them easy. I worked my turns and underwater recovery. The coach said that my turns are better but I need to tuck my chin and really kick faster. Being pretty good in butterfly I really don't do that good of a underwater butterfly kick at my turns. (500/3450)
50 easy (50/3500) I swam in the wall lane today and during some of the early part of each 400 I hit the wall at least once after I surfaced. At the beginning of each 400 the person behind me and I were still 5 seconds apart so when I was surfacing he was going into his turn. The surge of water pushed me against the wall each time. Luckily as the 400's went on the distance between us grew so I only had to worry about the surge every so often. This happens to me all the time in workouts when I swim freestyle. I think I must be surfacing with no motion so my body gets hit by the surge and is thrown aside. I think I pause for a second or so. Or I might just surface way over to my right and as I swim gravitate to the middle of the lane. I know that when we are swimming a distance free set as the distance between me and the swimmer behind me grows I slowly move to the middle after he passes by me as I'm entering the wall. Trying to avoid the various waves of the pool and get use to swimming in the middle for swim meets. This weekend at CalTech I witness a lot of swimmers, including me, racing while circle swimming instead of swimming down the middle of hte lane. I can beat that none of us was thinking like Jason Lezak and swimming off the draft of the other swimmer. We were swimming based on swim practice habits.
Well that is enough swimming to at least Friday!
MTD Yardage: 23,750
MTD LCM: 3,200
YTD Yardage: 138,400
YTD LCM 14,000
