Pool, Glorious Pool

Today I spent the morning sleeping in. Then I took an afternoon nap. I will say that I was a little bit bummed to be wasting such a nice day staying inside so much, but the sleep was so nice (and needed) that I'm really okay with that. Today was also the Terrier group swim, which meant more time spent indoors. Oh well. Hopefully summer is finally here and that will mean lots more nice weekends to spend outside.

Getting into the pool was so nice compared to getting into the ocean yesterday. While the pool is always a little bit cool, it's nothing like the ocean temperature and it's so nice to be able to see the bottom of the pool and know you're swimming in a straight line. I also never worried about drinking too much water and was actually glad to taste the chlorinated water instead of salt water. Megan was the coach today and she said that we would be doing a lot of speed work.

This was the workout:
300 Warm-Up
10 x 50 - on the 1:00
6 x 75 Pull
12 x 100 - on the 2:10
25 Sprint
75 Cool Down

Total distance = 2550 meters

The 300 warm-up was mostly a warm-up, but every 3rd length was supposed to be an easy to fast build. We should have all known right then that this wasn't going to be an easy workout and that it would pretty much kick our butts. The 10 x 50 were all easy down and fast back and we had a minute to complete each one. I'd say that I finished all of them in less than 0:50 and some were in 0:45, mostly depending on how fast the last 25 was.

The pulling was supposed to be easy-fast-easy. It's just still so interesting to me that people who are not great swimmers can be amazing pullers. I know it's because they obviously don't kick much when they're swimming regularly, but the difference between one and the other is really amazing to watch.

The 12 x 100 were broken down into three groups of 400. The first 100 would be easy, the second 100 would be slightly faster, the third 100 should be at race pace and the fourth 100 should be an all out sprint. Repeated three times and all of the 100s would be on the 2:10, so depending on how fast you swam, you'd have more recovery time. The first set of 400 was definitely the hardest one. Mainly the last 100 sprint. Megan said that she wanted to see us kicking really hard and I don't know why it is, but kicking really hard just takes a lot out of me. By the time we got to the second set of 400, I thought I was about to pee my pants (or bathing suit, as the case may be). I had to get out and go use the restroom, but I only missed a 50 of easy, so I don't think it was a huge deal in terms of the workout.

When we were starting the last sprint 100, I was just thinking how excited I was that once that was done we would get to do a cool-down and be done. Megan had different ideas, though. We had to do one more 25 sprint. She shuffled all of us around so that one person from each lane would have a race against each other. So, all of the really fast people from the far lane would race against each other, etc. When I was standing there, I was thinking that I wasn't sure I had it in me, but I was also thinking that it was only a 25 and I could do it. It actually was much more fun than I had expected - although I'm sure part of that was the competition aspect of it. I'm fairly sure I came in second, but it was pretty close with the girl in the lane next to me.

Finally we got to do the cool-down! I was definitely ready for that. My total distance today was 2500 meters (1.55 miles). I didn't use my stop watch, but I think the total time in the pool was about 1:03, just based on looking at my watch when we got in and out. Obviously not all that time was spent actually swimming as some of it was resting, but it still was a great workout and a good way to start the week.