A Little Workout Recap

Wednesday AM-Swim

Went to 24 Hour Fitness Wednesday morning for a swim. I decided to get a limited membership there until the Castle Hill Endless Pool situation is figured out. Fortunately, the folks at Castle Hill froze my membership while we wait in limbo for the City of Austin to decide when they can reopen their pools. Several safety areas must be addressed before this can happen and they aren’t expecting a resolution until fall unless the City Council takes pity on them.

The 24-Hour Fitness on William Cannon has a really decent pool area, but there are only 6 total lanes. Needless to say, I was worried when I pulled in around 6:30am and there were plenty of cars in the parking lot. “Surely every lane is full,” I assumed. Personally, I think I was just making excuses for not wanting to hop in the water and begin my 2500m workout.

Surprised as I was, only two people were utilizing the pool so I actually had plenty of space and no excuses! I’m glad that regular gym rats enjoy the monotony of elyptical machines and treadmills because that leaves the pool to people like me!

I recently purchased a copy of “The Waterproof Triathlete” that lists page after page of various swim workouts. I had decided on a particular workout the night before, but forgot to grab the book off my nightstand. Damn…The only thing I really remembered was that it started with 1000m of an EASY swim. So, I made the workout up as I went along.

1000m Easy Swim. Each slow lap was between :59-1:05. Again, there was nothing “race pace” about this portion. I was practicing my bi-lateral breathing, hand position practice, etc. There would be some laps where I felt like a fish and others where I felt like an elephant. The whole time I was very aware that my breathing was not labored at all. Just very steady. I did notice that I got a little stressed when a man hopped in the lane right next to mine. He was a middle-aged dude wearing a speedo (and probably shouldn’t have been), but it was obvious that he is/was a swimmer. Backstrokes, Fly, Breast Stroke, Freestyle…this dude did it all and he did it fast. Of course, my mind started getting frustrated every time I would get lapped by him and those “you suck at this” thoughts popped in and out with each wave of his that knocked my rhythm out of whack.

I did 6x Kickboard for 25m and then swim for 50m. Getting better at the kickboard.
5 x 50m at Race Pace. I did each one between :56-:59 (a sec or two faster than normal—yay!) I was definitely pleased with that especially after already swimming about 1500m already.
6 x 75m with fins, getting faster with each 25m
6 x 75m with paddles/buoy, getting faster with each 25m
1 50m lap for cool down

Over 2,600m for me today. I haven’t done that in a while.
An Ironman swim is 4,000m. I better grow some fins soon.

Wednesday PM-Corture
Shawn joined me for Corture tonight at J&A. We were supposed to have a new coach, but he/she never materialized so we did our own Adam-style of corture.
5 min of plank, lots of leg lifts, scissor kicks, 6in/12in kicks, pushups, 8-count body builders, swimmers, side planks, etc. Hard as hell, but I dig it a ton. Apparently, next week is Adam’s last week (again) so he’s supposed to be there to coach some epic workouts. I’m scared all over again.

Thursday AM-Gazelles 1,000s on the Track
Skud parked at my house this morning and we jogged the 1.6 miles or so to the AHS Track for 1000s. After our warm-ups, Coach put us in our groups. There was some confusion as to the # of repeats we were doing. 5? 6? In my mind, I knew I was going for 6 repeats today. Looking back, these times were MUCH slower than I’ve run them in the past. I felt pretty comfy every time and didn’t experience a whole lot of fatigue or form breakdown. I definitely could’ve picked up the pace, but was really enjoying the pack mentality. We all (Skud, Renee, Leslie, Amy F., Mike, Lilliana Venus and others) stuck together quite well and nailed the pace every time.

However, on our 5th repeat, we finished the first loop and Gilbert basically shouted for us to make it the last one and pick up the pace. None of us were really prepared for that, but like trained hamsters, we picked up the pace and it ended up being :10sec faster. Not bad for only having 600m of real estate to pick up 10 sec.

I don’t have the Garmin with me, but the first 4 repeats were in the 4:21-4:22 range. Repeat #4 was a 4:11.

In September 2006, my times were:
1 4:30 (too slow)#2 4:14 #3 4:17 #4 4:08 #5 4:05 #6 4:05

Like I said, I know I could’ve pushed it more today.

Oh, and in between these workouts, I've been eating and drinking too much wine;-)