An Easy Swim

Remember on Wednesday when I didn't work out and I thought it would be fine because I could just workout on Saturday? Yeah, well, that didn't happen. I'm just going to go ahead and blame Drew. He's been working like crazy and he came over to my apartment after work on Friday night, but didn't get here until 3 AM. Yikes! I was a little scared when someone walked in during the middle of the night, but all it really meant was that he slept in on Saturday morning, so I did too. Saturday afternoon was spent at the Belmont Stakes, where the horse races were fun, but none of the horses we bet on won! By the time we got home and made dinner and ate, it was 10 PM and time for bed!

This afternoon we spent bumming around town. We took some of Drew's walking tour cards down to the Lower East Side and spent about 2 and a half hours walking around and having a late lunch/brunch. I think we walked a little over 2 miles in our walking tour, so not a bad afternoon activity. I had to cut things a bit short so that I could head to the Terrier swim. After a bit of a lazy week, I was hoping for a really hard workout, but that's not exactly what happened.

When I got there, there wasn't any regular swim coach there. It was just Robert, the person who runs the Terrier group and the main triathlon training. He had a workout laid out for us and it sounded like it would be pretty hard, but I think I got in the wrong lane for a hard workout. I should have moved up a lane so that I could have pushed myself a bit more. Anyway, this was the workout:

200 swim
4 x 50 kicks (splash on first 25 / no splash on second 25)
100 build
100 swim

Main Set (was supposed to be repeated 4 times, but we only had time for 3)
4 x 75 build (0:20 RI)
200 pull (breathe every 3rd stroke)

100 cool down

Total Distance: 2200 meters / 58 minutes (1.36 miles)

When we jumped in the pool, it was freezing. I actually wished I had had my wetsuit with me. However, after doing the warm-up, I felt okay, which gives me hope about swimming in the triathlon in cold water. I'm hoping my body won't freak out too much and I'll just be able to swim and warm up.

On the 75s for the main set, Robert explained that we should really go slower than we thought on the first 25, medium on the second 25, and much harder than we wanted to on the third 25. That was really where the problems started. I felt like the first 25 I was swimming really easy and the next two were an easy medium. At some point, I moved to the back of the line so that I could wait a bit longer before starting out so that I could have some distance in between me and the people ahead of me, which helped me be able to swim a little harder.

I'll admit that part of the problem was that Robert left after about 20 minutes of practice. I think after he left, I mentally didn't really have a reason to push myself very hard and I'm sure it was the same for a lot of other people there as well. One of our other teammates got out and watched us all swim, which was nice of her to do (I guess Robert wasn't feeling well).

The pulling was really interesting because we all had to switch up the order of the lane after we did the first pull. The person who was probably the slowest overall swimmer in our lane was the fastest puller. And the person who was leading the whole time (faster swimmer) was the slowest puller. How does that happen? The person who was fast at pulling I can sort-of understand because she mentioned that she knows her kick is weak so she's really moving at the same speed when pulling as she is at regular swimming. But to be the opposite seems bad for a triathlete. Aren't we supposed to save our legs for the bike and run?

Anyway, this week in my training plan I have Monday, Wednesday and Saturday off. I'm going to probably just take tomorrow off from cardio and just do pilates and then do workouts the rest of the week. I think it will all even out.