If I Could Reach

Remember earlier today when I said that I should take it easy from now on? Yeah, well, that's going to be starting tomorrow, apparently. I decided to go to the Terrier swim practice this afternoon. I was actually worried that perhaps there wouldn't be a practice since I knew a lot of Terriers were going to be competing in the War at the Shore triathlon this morning. It ended up that the coach had competed this morning and got to swim practice about 5 minutes late and there were only six of us that showed up for practice, but that also made it sort of nice and laid back.

I ended up with my own lane, which was a nice treat!
This was the workout for today:

200 free warm-up
200 kick warm-up
3 x 50 descending (on the 1:00)
3 x 50 descending (on the 1:00)
50 easy
3 x 100 descending (on the 2:10)
3 x 100 descending (on the 2:10)
50 easy
100 reaching - 19 or 20 strokes
100 reaching - 17 or 18 strokes
100 easy

The descending sets were 50 (or 100) easy, 50 medium, and 50 fast. Especially on the 100s, we really had to make sure that we weren't over-swimming the first two. Otherwise, we wouldn't really improve on our times for the last set. On the second set of 100s, Sarah said that we should all finish under 1:30. I didn't quite make it. I'm not going to lie. My arms were tired today. Although I think it was good for them to get out there and just sort of not push too hard.

The 100s reaching were done really slowly. Sarah had us do 25s and count how many strokes we took. The first 100 we were just supposed to swim normally and count. I had either 19 or 20 strokes per 25 meters. Then after the first 100 she told us to really reach and see how many strokes we could shave off. Once we all reached the wall after swimming 25 and reaching more than we did before, she laughed and said that we all did exactly what she wanted us to do. We sped up. Instead of keeping our same easy pace, we sped up and shaved a couple of strokes off. I went down to either 17 or 18 strokes per 25 meters.

The whole purpose of this exercise is that we're more likely to swim and reach further like that while we're actually racing, so we should practice swimming like that in practice so that it feels more natural while we're actually racing instead of changing our strokes. For the 100 cool-down, I definitely tried to keep an easy pace and also keep my stroke count a little bit lower. Sarah said that we should have the same cadence regardless of how fast we're going. It should be a change in effort rather than how fast we're stroking our arms. Although this is definitely something I'm going to work on, I think I'm going to save it for after the triathlon!

Today's total: 1700 Meters (1.05 miles) in approximately 52 minutes.

Calories: 506
Maximum HR: 182
Average HR: 145