swim better

Missed 2 sessions a couple of weeks ago, but had not choice. Justin Bieber for the kids one time, the kids were sick on the other. We have had some brutal sessions too. Today three of the fastest swimmers who sometimes swim in the fast lane decided to swim in the medium lane… It was brutal, I was trailing hugely!
It was an IM Marathon and my left arm slowly became worn out… It was exhausting… I hope I start to get stronger in the next few weeks… Still a lot of fun though…

So, the 3 weeks turned into 6 weeks off because they needed to close the kids pool for 3 weeks to clean it and didn’t set up a spot for kids to swim in the big pool…

But I am back. I have been swimming 3 times last week, 2 as part of the master’s swim class. The swims were tough, but I didn’t drop off as much as I thought I would. Last Thursday’s session was brutal, ending in 5×100 m. on 2:00 pace time. Needless to say I fell off the pace. Still, I am back and it feels good.

Every year they close the pool for three weeks to clean it. 3 weeks of pool cleaning seems excessive to me. This annoys the hell out of me. I should follow up on this and see if they can shorten the period and why it takes so long. It is a municipal pool after all.

well… swimmingly… I am sure I have used that line a number of times, but swimming is going well.
I have improved so much, yet I still have a long ways to go. We have had Stephanie as our teacher for the last 4 month session and it has been awesome. She was definitely a hard work teacher and stressed putting up some significant distance. The sessions were hard. We put some serious distance on the board every week and it was great. A couple of weeks ago Bree came back and that is great too. She focuses on technique and a balance of strokes. The sessions are great and I know I am getting better, still I do miss the tough swim sessions.
I went down to the pool on Monday and banged out 1.5k. I was planning to do 2k and swim for an hour, but I was feeling a twinge in my elbow so I cut it short. I can’t afford to injure my arm!
In any case it took 33 minutes and it wasn’t hard at all. I just kept swimming in a relaxed fashion. I will go back on Friday and do a mix of swimming and stairmaster. Maybe another 1.5k.
I plan to do a bunch of open ocean swims soon. Wouldn’t mind getting up to 1hr of sustained swimming.

as I love to blog about swimming. I think it is the hour in the water that I have nothing to do but swim and think of my blog entry. In any case, if this gets me posting more often then it can’t be that bad.

So, since I last left my swimming story, I have moved up from the worst in the slow lane, all the way into the middle lane. This is a huge leap for me. I spent a year and a half in the slow lane at Masters swimming, so the move to the middle lane earlier last month was a huge one.

Only problem is that I am now the slowest in the medium lane. I finally got Rob to go over to the fast lane last night as he is way to fast for the middle lane, but that still left me last. The real problem is that John in the slow lane is faster than I am at the front crawl. I can beat him at everything else including all of the kicking drills, but he beats me in the front crawl. In last nights session we were doing back to back to back to back front crawl on 2 minutes per 125m. John came over to the middle lane for this swim and I was lagging a little although right on Johns feet. After a little while Rob quit the fast lane and came into the middle lane giving us too many people.
No one had to move, but I didn’t want to lag and get moved so I just kept pushing. After about the 3rd 125m set John quit and ended up moving back to the slow lane!!! I did it, I fended off a challenger and kept my spot in the middle lane. That is actually the reason I have been able to stay I think, it is because I do whatever is asked without question or comment. People don’t want to kick out people who work hard… I hope.
So, the swimming is going swimmingly. I have been pushed up to doing all of my 50m on under a minute and I can power through at this speed. I think I could probably do my 750 at under 15 minutes, but I haven’t checked that in awhile.
Oh well, I will report back on my next swim and hopefully I will be better at swimming!