Got up early this morning to do some yard maintenance before it got too hot. I hit the pool at 7:55, ready to swim. The staff at the club is doing a good job keeping the water temperature low during a string of 100°+ days and even though 82° water temperature isn't optimal keeping it in that zone is pretty amazing.
We have a coach who has decided that our Thursday 8 a.m. workouts will be Individual Medley workout days. Instead of concentrating on long distance freestyle or race-paced freestyle swims we're going to concentrate on all four strokes. Butterfly, breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle. This focus on all the strokes always brings out the moans, groans and bitching from the triathletes who only want to work on their freestyle for tri competition. But all of us former high school and college swimmers welcome the once familiar stroke assortment as a prime example of good cross training.
We had about 30 people at this morning's workout. There is an earlier workout that goes from 7:00 till 8:00 and it attracts a dedicated following of the most driven of the swimmers, and also a lot of people who have to show up somewhere for work by 8:30 or 9:00. The early people sometimes disparagingly refer to the later workout as "The Executive Workout" on the premise that we have more control over our personal schedules. Or no schedules at all. We prefer to call it "The Varsity Practice..."
We had the usual 1,000 yard warm-up today but then the fun began. We starting doing dolphin kick drills and that was the precursor to a butterfly-heavy slog.
The set was complex. It went like this:
1 x 25 yards butterfly
1x50 yards backstroke/breaststroke
1 x 25 yards freestyle
1 x 100 yards I.M. (all four strokes).
2 x 25 yards butterfly
2 x 50 yards backstroke/breaststroke
2 x 25 yards freestyle
2 x 100 I.M. yards (descending times = ascending effort)
3 x 25 yards butterfly
3 x 50 yards backstroke/breaststroke
3 x 25 yards sprint freestyle
3 x 100 yards I.M.
4 x 25 yards butterfly (descending times = each one faster than the one before)
4 x 50 yards backstroke/breaststroke (descending)
4 x 25 yards freestyle sprints
4 x100 yards I.M. ( also descending ).
Followed by a warm down.
The butterfly got harder and harder. I can see I've got a lot of work ahead of me....
It's fun to do this against a pace clock, on set intervals, with lots of like-minded people bent on going fast and touching the wall before everyone else. I never get tired of the competition... or the thrill of just being in the water. My sense of gratitude was just off the charts this morning.
Thinking of heading up to to Richmond, Virginia in the first week of August to swim two or three events at the USMS National Championships. We'll see what the schedule looks like....
A nice Summer to stay wet.
5 comments:
Great post, I'm really envious of your dedication and skills. Wish I was half as energetic. Have you ever thought about scuba diving as a way to expand your photographic repertoire, it could take over from streetscapes maybe?
Might think about it if I lived on the islands. But then I'd have to buy new cameras..... underwater Leicas? Do they even make them? 🤔
There are underwater housings for Leicas, but (here's the non-surprise) they're a bit pricy. I've scuba-dived some, and in my experience, scuba divers often aren't particularly good swimmers. The skill set is simply different. One measure of this is that the standard beginner-scuba test is the requirement that the beginner be able to swim two hundred yards...no time limit, any stroke. I mean, really...you could dog-paddle it and take four hours. One of the things that scuba divers are taught is that the arms basically should be quiescent. I guess it wouldn't hurt to be a good swimmer, but it's really not necessary -- the work is done with your legs and fins, while your hands do other stuff.
Waiting for the link to the video that shows the workout in excruciating detail.
Kinda hard to do good filming while in the water swimming Mike.
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