900 yard warm up.
The pool has been in great shape recently. The staff have been able to keep the water temperature around 80° (Fahrenheit) even though we've had several days of triple digital temperatures compounded with high humidity overnight. The water is clean and clear. All good.
There are two masters workouts on Sunday mornings. One is at 8 and the next is at 9. These are one hour later than the workouts on Tuesday through Saturday. We get to sleep in for an extra hour. How fun!
1950 yards main set. 400 yards warm down.
Sundays used to be relaxed with less aggressive swims than we usually do during the week. Today was a bit different. A lot of faster swimmers showed up for the 9 o'clock swim. That subtly shifts everyone down the line to move a bit quicker, cut rest times a bit and drop interval times from the "comfort" zone to the "hard work" zone. It felt like being back in high school or college to aim for 100s on 1:20. But, each lane modifies their interval times to suit the constituency of their lane. Fastest people can repeat on 1:20 but as you go down the lanes the repeat times get slower.
I was coated with sunscreen today and felt pretty good in the water but by the time we finished up I was already muscle sore and looking forward to a big breakfast. I made workout all six of the days that the pool was open and running last week. With an average of 3,000 yards per day that put my week's total at around 18,000 yards. Not bad for the demographic but I have memories of some swim days in high school when we went 14,000 yards in a day, split over two workouts. The first workout back then being 5:30 a.m. That's not the "wake up" time. That's "in the water and moving" time. I'm too spoiled now for that kind of torture. I'll settle for the more restrained weekly distance. Happily.
(Competitive swimming has changed/evolved. There is less emphasis on heroic yardage and more on technique and speed work. And dry land resistance workouts. And flexibility stretches. The days of yardage over 10K are mostly over; even for the most elite swimmers).
I knew you couldn't enjoy coffee this morning until we talked about the Sunday swim practice. And, no mice in the pool.
The calm after the swim storm.
Diet is important. Exercise is important. Moving is mandatory.
5 comments:
Like you, part of my "keeping moving" is a daily photo walk. I found that in the end my favourite "street" camera is the Lumix GX1 equipt with the Lumix 20mm f1.7 lens. Stunningly sharp, beautiful colour and some of the best OOC black and white images. I actually prefer the GX1 over the mono Leica for BW. Hearsy I know!
Eric
What's your dryland workout consist of? My "kids" (our of college now) play ice hockey, and their teams would do "dryland" warmups before they hit the ice.
For me, I play a lot of tennis and have recently added off-court resistance training to the mix to prevent injuries so I can keep playing tennis. In the old days, tennis was enough to keep me fit. Now I probably do 2 hours off-court for every hour on-court. I wish I had been better about conditioning in my younger days ... good to start that habit early!
My Dryland workouts are spaced through each day. I try to get in 60 push ups a day but in spaced batches of 20. So twenty in the morning maybe an hour after swim practice, twenty mid-afternoon, twenty an hour before bedtime. Long walks, of course. And lots of stretching. Doorway stretches, tricep stretches and most people don't spend enough time with their hands over their heads so I spend five or so minutes each day, after swim practice, flat on my back with my arms stretched as far over my head as possible. You know the stretch is starting to work when you can feel your elbows touching the ground. Helps to anchor your hands with a ten pound weight or something. The push ups are most directly helpful with the swimming. Breaking them up into groups of 20 makes them manageable. No! You can't do them on your knees. Flat body, like planking. Nose to the ground.
And Art, coffee. Lots of coffee....
Six days on, one day off.
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