This Looks Like Fun

While I'm not sure I love two-a-days, I'm definitely getting better at them, at least on Sunday. I didn't even really mind going swimming this afternoon. Of course, when I got there and saw what the workout was, I changed my mind. There are two intermediate group swim sessions on Sundays - one at 3:30 and one at 4:30. I tend to go to the later one as it seems like there are typically fewer people there, which I like. It also means that I usually get to see the last couple minutes of the workout ahead of me.

Before we even got in the water, Coach Sarah said that she wanted to talk to all of us - those who were about to get into the water and the people who were getting out. She said that we should all be swimming at least twice (and preferably three times) a week. She told us that she's just as guilty of this as everyone else, but we should all remember that there are no junk laps. The most important thing is just getting into the water, even if we only have 20 or 30 minutes. We don't have to feel obligated to always be doing really long sets in the water.

I think that this was a really good reminder for me. I often think that I don't want to go swimming at the pool at my gymnasium because you can only reserve a lane for 30 minutes and I often worry that it's not enough time to get in a decent workout, but the point is that I should just get in and swim and the workout will take care of itself.

Sarah gave us her go-to 1500 yard workout when she's not really feeling into swimming. She does 500 swim, 400 pull, 300 drill, 200 kick and 100 swim. I have to say that I feel a little bit bad now for not just finishing up the last 800 yards that I should have swum last week. Oh well, that's in the past and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

This was today's workout:

Warm-Up
200 swim
100 kick
200 swim
100 kick

Main Set
4 x 100-75-50-25 (Rest: 0:10)
4 x 150 Deck-ups
1 x 100 Deck-ups

Cool-Down
100 swim

The warm-up is pretty self explanatory. The Main Set was pretty tough. The 4 x 100-47-50-25 were increasing effort as the distance decreased. So, the 25 was supposed to be really hard and the 100 would then be used as an active recovery. I really tried to pay attention and not cheat on the rest times as I wanted to get in as much swimming as possible.

The Deck-Ups were the part that I was not looking forward to. It was the part that I had seen the previous group doing when I arrived to practice and as soon as I walked in, I told Sarah, "this looks like fun!". She then kept asking me while I was actually doing it if I was having fun or not. I gotta tell you, it wasn't all that much fun, even if it was a good workout.

The purpose was to simulate coming out of the water and heading into T1 and going from horizontal to vertical rather quickly. So, we would swim 150, pull ourselves up onto the pool deck, stand up, take a couple breaths and jump back into the water and swim again. I think that the best part of the workout was the jumping back into the water. I was a little nervous that my goggles might pop off, but they stayed firmly in place. Great to know for the jumping off the boat bit at Alcatraz!

The total yardage for this week is supposed to be 5200 yards swimming. I've already done 2,400, so that leaves 2,800 to go. I'm not 100% I'll fit it all in this week, especially since I want to spend more time biking, but it's good to know that I've got a good chunk of it done.

Swimming
Time: 48:38
Distance: 2400 Yards (1.36 Miles)
Pace: 35:39/mile
Calories: 483
Maximum HR: 171
Average HR: 158