I Spy With My Little Eye

This morning I met Laura for a swim at Manhattan Plaza Health Club. Last time we went there, I wasn't overly impressed with the facilities or the clientele, but I was trying to have a more open mind this time. Laura sent me a text that she was running late, so I told her that I would just meet her in the pool. That way, I could get in a longer workout. I printed out a swimplan.com workout so that I wouldn't be struggling for things to do in the water and I could hopefully push myself a bit more than I had been the last couple times I swam on my own.

This was the workout:

Warm-Up:
4 x 50 Any Stroke (even pace), rest 0:15/50 yd
Build Up:
4 x 100 Freestyle Swim (kick every 4th 25 yd), rest 0:20/100 yd
Core:
2 x 200 Freestyle Swim, leave on 3:40/200 yd
2 x 100 Freestyle Swim, leave on 1:55/100 yd
2 x 200 Freestyle Swim, leave on 3:40/200 yd
4 x 50 Freestyle Swim, leave on 1:02/50 yd
Warm Down:
1 x 100 Freestyle Push & Glide, rest 0:20/100 yd
1 x 100 Freestyle Easy, rest 0:20/100 yd

If someone could please explain the build-up part to me, I'd really appreciate it. At first, I was thinking that I would just use a kick board for every 4th 25. Then I realized that I would need to have 4 kick boards at the far end of the pool for that to work and that didn't seem right. Then I thought maybe what I was supposed to do was use a pull buoy for the first 75 and swim regularly on the last 25. That still didn't make sense because the pull buoy would have always ended up at the far end of the pool as well. So, what I did was to swim 300 regularly and then I did 100 with a kick board. That was really all I could do to make sense of those directions!

Because it wasn't raining yesterday like it had been at our first visit to MPHC, they had the retractable roof open all the way. The retractable part was really only over the shallow end, but it was actually pretty nice to have it open to the sky. Laura got there when I was about half-way through the core portion of the workout. Shortly after she got there, I spied something pretty exciting. I saw someone walk up some stairs and I just had a feeling that perhaps that they were going to a hot tub. The guy in the lane next to me was resting for a few seconds, so I asked him if I was correct and he said that there were two hot tubs! I can't believe we didn't see them the first time we were there! What a bummer! I told Laura and we both agreed to keep swimming for a while before hitting the hot tub.

I finished my workout, but Laura wasn't done with hers yet. She said she wanted to swim for another 10 minutes or so. I told her that was fine with me and I decided that since I was already a bit cooled-down, I would just keep working on my new kick from the hips. I did 500 kick while she was finishing up. These are my totals for the day:

Distance: 2500 yards = 1.42 miles
Time: 1:02:21
Calories: 618
Max HR: 179
Average HR: 148

After getting out of the pool, we spent a very relaxing 15 minutes in the hot tub before hitting the showers. I will say, if a hot tub was involved at the end of every workout, I'd be much happier to get up in the mornings! Although it is disturbingly getting easier and easier to wake up these days. My hamstring still seems to be feeling tight and it's definitely still noticeable when I'm walking around, but it seems better than yesterday. I think this was just a minor thing, but I'm really glad that I didn't push myself too hard yesterday and do something serious.