April Swimmies

[roadie gal]

Daisylubob - I'm going to try to do 3 tris this year: Try for Real Oly in June, the Donner Lake Oly in July, and the Black Diamond HIM in September. I've felt for a while that the swim is my worst sport. It's taken me a few years, but I finally found a coach that I really like.

Mickchick - 100 miles is a LONG way! Good going.

[GLC1968]

I meant to post this over the weekend, but I got distracted.

I swam again on Saturday. In fact, I cancelled a hair appointment so that I could get in a swim! I did a total of 1550 yards. The big news is that I did my first 500y straight. I was doing mostly 100s when I thought that it might be fun to time my tri distance even though I wasn't sure I could do it. So I started my watch and started swimming. I did it in 12:52. When I signed up for the tri, I told them I could do 500y in 12:00 - so I'm almost there. What a guess!! Actually, I had to stop twice - once to adjust my goggles and once to set up the lane lines so that I could count my laps, so if I took that out, I'd probably be pretty close to 12:00 already. I still have 5 more weeks of training, too. I'm so stoked!

Thanks, mickchick! I'm pleased with how much I enjoy this and I aspire to swim the kinds of distances you swim... some day!

[Veronica]

That's pretty cool GLC.

Veronica

[Blueberry]

I finally get to post! I went to the pool and actually swam for the first time in many (9?) years. Wow! It was awesome. The muscle memory really is still there. I had just warmed up when a very nice lady asked if I was there for the stroke clinic - turns out it's a free clinic offered to help swimmers work on form. She let me join in - so I have lots of new drills to work on.

I am NOT coordinated enough to count, so I have no idea how far I went (how do you all do it?). I did swim (with some rests and lots of breast stroke) for over an hour. Yay!!

[GLC1968]

Yay, CA!! That's great!

I suck at counting. I've just got too many other things to think about as I work on this swim thing that I can't waste precious brain power on counting. That's my excuse, anyway!

I do two things to keep track.

1) I use my HRM watch and set it in chrono mode. Then I just hit 'lap' every time I start or finish a lap. This way, I get my lap times and my rest times. At first I messed up a bit here and there, but now it's become almost second nature to hit it. If I'm doing 50's, I hit it at 50. If I'm doing 100's, I wait and hit it at 100, etc. I can tell from the times what distance is what (since I don't have set swim workouts yet). My only issue is that my watch doesn't download to my excel sheet automatically, so I have to key the times in manually. Kind of a pain, but I'll live.

2) When I forget my watch, I push all the floats on one of the lane markers down to one end. Then I slide one float over for each lap I do (whether I'm counting 50's or counting 100's, etc). That works in a pinch but I feel silly doing that if there are a lot of people in the pool. Luckily, there is hardly ever anyone at my 24-hour fitness pool, so no one cares what I do!

[Susan Otcenas]

My pool has done it's seasonal switch from 25 yards to 50 meters. I loooooove swimming 50 meters. I feel so lucky to be able to swim in a pool this length!

[GLC1968]

Ugh - had a lousy swim last night. I swam in the pool I first started swimming in and it was crazy in there. Kids hanging on the lane lines (lessons in the next lane), 30 overweight people bobbing up and down in unison creating massive waves (water aerobic class), and the fact that the pool has a diving well in the deep end which makes the transition from shallow to deep VERY steep and the transition was bothering my eyes and making me kind of nauseous each time I swam over it. The lanes are also 25M and it messes with my rhythm since I'm used to 25y (or at least, I think that's my issue).

Anyway, I managed 1200M in 40 minutes. Did mostly 50's with :20 or :15 rest or 100's with :30 rest between. I wanted to try timing another 500, but I was running out of time. Plus, there were just too many distractions (being forced to move lanes, people coming and going, kids, etc) to get an accurate read anyway.

Then I had to dodge about 20 kids and their moms in the locker rooms. The whole time I kept thinking "see...this is why I don't have kids".