There's A Pool I Haven't Been To Yet?

This afternoon Drew made me go to the Terrier swim. And I was not happy about it. I was napping very happily on the couch and he woke me up and told me that it was time for me to go swimming. I will say that he was in charge of making dinner and it was a surprise and it was supposed to be "really good for swimmers". So, I was left with little choice but to tell him that I was mad at him and head off to swim practice.

I should also mention that the Terrier swim practice has moved to a new pool, which is further away from our apartment and it was raining, which didn't help matters at all. I knew in my heart that as soon as I got to practice I'd be glad that I went, but it was just the walk there that was pretty miserable.

The pool is just okay. It's 4 lanes (our old pool was 5), but this should probably really only be a three-lane pool because of how narrow the lanes are. We were lucky that there were only 8 people there total (two to a lane), otherwise I think it would have been a lot less fun to swim. This pool is also in yards instead of meters, so it's a bit shorter than our old pool too. The showering facilities at this new pool are a little bit better, though. Oh, and this new pool is HOT. Really hot. Uncomfortably so when seriously swimming. I actually had to concentrate on not overdoing it. Next time I'll be sure to bring a water bottle in an effort to curb the heat.

Megan was coaching today (I think she's my favorite swim coach) and we did a more drill intensive workout than usual. She explained that in the off-season she really wants us all to be working on things that we knew we were doing wrong last season but didn't fix then. For me, that'd be bi-lateral breathing. Ick. I just love to breathe on the right. It feels so natural. But, I'm going to make a conscious effort to work on it.

This was today's workout:

Warm-Up
300 swim
200 pull
100 drill (one arm)

Main Set
8 x 50 drill down, swim back
25/50/75/100/75/50/25 (0:15 rest)
6 x 75 (0:15 rest)

For the drills in the warm-up, I did one armed drills (alternating left and right each 25 yards). During the main set, Megan gave us 4 different drills that we did twice. The first drill was fisting - where you make fists with your hands instead of having an open palm. The second drill was zipper - you roll onto your side, pretending you were zipping up and then down a zipper along the side of your ribcage, then taking a full stroke before rolling over to the other side. The third drill was 3-3-3 - where you take three strokes with your right arm, three with the left and then three alternating. The fourth drill was 12 o'clock - where you roll onto your side, lift your arm that is doing the stroke up to 12 o'clock (the ceiling) and then bend your elbow and enter into the water. I was not very good at the 12 o'clock drill, mainly because I kept forgetting to bend my elbow and then I'd laugh and get all sidetracked.

The second part of the main set was a build from one length of the pool to four and then back down to one length. By the last length we were supposed be going at 100%. I'll be perfectly honest and say that I did not go quite as hard as I know I'm capable of during this. I was already pretty tired from the run this morning (not sure how well that bodes for my half-Ironman triathlon, but I'm trying not to think about it now) and with the pool so hot, I knew that there was no way that I could push myself to 100% and still be functioning. So, I probably did it at about 85-90% and was okay with that effort.

The final part of the main set were the 75s that were pretty brutal. We had to breathe every third stroke on the first 25, every fifth stroke on the second 25 and every seventh stroke on the third 25. I'm just going to go ahead and say right now that seven is a lot of strokes. I definitely cheated twice on this and took a breath after the fifth stroke, but I did the best that I could. I also really hung out on my side getting a super deep breath, so I wasn't very fast while doing this. But, I guess it was good practice for my bilateral breathing!

We finished the 75s right at 5:30 and there wasn't a cool down other than a really hot shower (I guess they really like hot water at this gym ...) and walk home. At least it had stopped raining by the time I was walking home. And I came home and had a fantastic dinner and watched some football. Not at all a bad evening and I have Drew to thank for it!

Swimming
Time: 60:00
Distance: 1.05 miles (1850 yards)
Pace: 57:08/mile