Do I Even Like Swimming?

Last night I spent a good amount of time working on my half-Ironman training plan. I was going back and forth on how I wanted to keep track of my workout and I finally decided that I would put everything into Ontri manually (I already log all of my other workouts there) and then I would also be able to keep track of what I actually do. So, the plan and the actuals will be in one place. I only mapped out the first 9 weeks so far (of a 20 week plan). Here's what Week 1 looks like:


The only complaint I have is that Ontri uses a Sunday through Saturday week and my plan is a Tuesday through Sunday week, so it's a little bit off, but once I get started it won't make a difference. What I've realized is that this is a lot of time that I'll be spending swimming, biking and running. Especially biking. The good thing about finally getting organized on this is that I realized that I don't have to start "really" training until April, which gives me two weeks after the half-marathon to ease into things for triathlon training. I thought I was going to have to start the day after the half-marathon, so I feel a lot better now.

This morning Laura somehow conned me into going swimming with her in our wetsuits. We met at the horrible 14th Street Y and donned our suits. As we were getting into them another woman in the locker room asked us if they were as hard to get off as they are to get on. I actually thought that we got them on pretty quickly all things considered.

And then we walked out to the pool. On the way out I asked Laura if she had a plan for today's swim and she said no. That made me feel better about not having a plan either. Even though I had one in my bag plus I had practically memorized several options last night from the half-IM training plan, I just didn't feel like being organized about my swimming.

Part of the problem with this pool is that it is always really crowded. Today was no exception. I couldn't figure out if I should swim in the fast lane or not. I decided just to take my chances. It turned out okay. The swimming mainly went like this: I'd swim 100. Stop. Be annoyed at how many people were in my lane. Stand there and wait for people to do their flip turns. Swim 100. Stop. Be annoyed at how many people were in my lane. Repeat 12 more times.

At some point after only swimming 200 or 300 yards, I realized that I'm not even sure I still like swimming. After all this running I've been doing, it's hard to switch to other sports. I think part of it this morning was the whole wetsuit thing. Running is so simple and doesn't involve a lot of gear, but this morning was a sharp contrast to that. And even if you have to share the road with bikers and other runners, it's not quite the same as sharing a lane at the pool. I'm pretty sure I do still like swimming, it just took me a while to remember that I did.

I will say that I completely forgot how floaty wetsuits are. I felt like my feet were out of the water when I tried to kick, so I'm not sure how effective kicking was in general. Luckily I've got months before I really have to wear a wetsuit so there is plenty of time to try this again and work on my kick. Hopefully somewhere when it's not so crowded.

All in all, the swim ended up being fine. Not my best, but not my worst either. I'm not too worried about the time since a good portion of that was me standing around being irritated. I'm hoping at the very least it was a good recovery day for my legs!

Swimming
Time: 32:13
Distance: 1400 yards (0.79 miles)
Pace: 40:28/mile
Calories: 287
Maximum HR: 171
Average HR: 142