Sunday, Boring Sunday

Date: Sunday, August 28, 2011
Time: 11:30 a.m.
Short Course Yards
302 days to Trials

2000 swim freestyle (time: 22:55, averaged 1:10 per 100, with :30 second break at 1000)

16x50 on 1:00, 4 of each stroke: 2 drill/2 swim

8x25 on :45 -- 15 meters fast

100 IM fast (:58)

200 easy

100 IM fast (:57)

300 easy

I'm going to make a very long story short. On weekends, I am usually in Tucson. I don't usually swim on Saturdays. I swim on Sunday, and almost all the time I am swimming alone at the University of Arizona's Hillenbrand Aquatic Center. We teach swimming lessons at Hillenbrand on Sundays, so I wanted to come in early for a workout before the lesson.

It's always a mental chore for me to stay focused through the entire workout I have pre-planned, and most of the time I can make it through an entire workout without talking myself out of a particualr set, or most of the workout.

Today, I wanted to see how far I could swim before my mind went completely insane from boredom. I made a goal of 2000 yards before I dove in. I had to stop at 1000 to let out a gas bubble in my stomach that was making me nauseous. (I usually get these gas bubbles during distance freestyle sets.) Since I wasn't bored by the swim at that point, I decided to keep going. I was pretty happy with the pace I managed to hold. A pace of 1:10 is just a couple of seconds slower than my aerobic pace for freestyle, and given that I never looked at the clock, except during my halfway break and  at the end, I was glad that I stayed on a good pace. It felt like I was slipping in my stroke in the last 500, because I was a little excited that the end was near. I was feeling pretty good at 2000, and I briefly considered swimming a little longer, but I decided against it.

I took three heart rates at the end of the swim (28, 24, 22 for a 10-second count, with 30 seconds in between each). My heart was beating fine, but I was suddenly overcome with a feeling that I wanted to go home. I didn't want to do the 50s, mostly because I didn't want to do butterfly. I mentioned earlier that I usually do not change the workout, but today I changed the 50s. All 16 of them were supposed to be swim, but I did not feel like starting the set with butterfly swim after that long set.

I changed the rest of the workout because my body was feeling a little lethargic. Instead of 8x100 IMs on 1:40, with Nos. 4 and 8 fast, I did two fast IMs with some easy swimming in between. Though my times on the IMs were good, I still don't feel like I'm ready for sprinting. The 15-meter sprints felt like an effort, and I didn't feel like my strokes had any snap on the IMs. I'm in no hurry; the sprinting will come. It's good to be working on my aerobic conditioning/endurance for a while.

I'm looking forward to my day off from the pool tomorrow, then kicking into gear again on Tuesday. See you then!