Day 22: Masters' Swim Group

I survived my first session with the Masters' Swimming group! This meant getting up at 4:45 this morning and leaving the house at 5:20 to get to the pool for 6. I live about 25-30 minutes away from the pool, and I needed time to change, because I know myself. If I wear my suit to the pool, the chances are very high that I will do something like forget to take underwear with me. Also, it's easier to use the bathroom before getting started if I'm not already in my suit. Much better to wear street clothes to the gym and change there.

So, this morning, I crawled out of bed at o'dark thirty, got dressed,  then ate a banana and some yogurt in the hopes that it would be enough food to 1) ensure I could operate a motor vehicle at 5:20 in the morning,  2) get through a 90 minute swimming workout and 3) not upset my stomach during said 90 minute swimming workout. I was successful on all fronts- I was hungry when I was done swimming, but not low blood sugar shaky, and my stomach was perfectly fine.

When I got to the pool, no one was there! It's Labor Day, but there hadn't been any notice on the website that said there'd be no swimming today. So, after a couple of minutes, I figured no one was coming and went ahead and got in the pool. I swam 3 50s, then another woman came and she said she was there for the swimming. Apparently 6 often means like, 6:05, which is good to know (to me, starting something at 6 means I'd better be there and ready to go no later than 5:55). The coach showed up shortly after that, so it was all good.

Mish, the coach, asked me to swim a 50 for her so she could get an idea of what to do with me. So, I did a 50 free in about 1:20 (this is not a land speed record, if you're unfamiliar with swimming times. This is S-L-O-W, but it's a fairly reasonable pace for me). Then we chatted for a few minutes about what I know (i.e., I know all 4 competition strokes, but don't ask me to do butterfly because I'm wretched at it and backstroke has been irritating my shoulder for some reason) and what my goals are (swim the entire 10 minutes of the swim portion of the indoor tri). Turns out a 1:20 50 pace is a fairly similar pace to a few other people in the group (who weren't there today- holiday, don'cha know) so I should be able to keep up fairly well, particularly once I get into the swing of things.

And then we started the workout. 200 to warm up, which was plenty, given that I'd effectively done an additional 200 with the 3 laps I did before everyone showed up and the test 50. Then we did a ladder of timed 50s. A ladder is where you do increasingly longer sets with rest in between, then increasingly shorter sets with rest in between. This is what today's ladder looked like for an example:

1 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
2 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
4 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
8 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
4 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
2 x 50 on 2 minutes
1 minute rest
1 x 50 on 2 minutes
Done!

So, basically, I did each 50 in something less than 2 minutes (I was ranging from 1:20 to 1:45 once I got tired), rested until the 2 minute mark, then did the next 50. In between sets of 50, I got however much time was left on the 2 minutes plus a full minute rest (sometimes a little more- we had to make some adjustments to keep both me and Brandi, the other swimmer, together. She was doing twice as many 50s on half the time). This is challenging, but I kept on pace- I didn't miss a mark, which is pretty good for the first day. Somewhere in the middle of the set of 8 50s I clicked into swim team mode (which I didn't realize I remembered) and just concentrated on keeping things long and finding a rhythm that got me enough air. So, I was tired by the time we were done, but I wasn't completely about to collapse. Hopefully, I can maintain that.

Next swimming day is Thursday, when I'll do this again (and then go to work. The nice thing about today was I got to come home. And yes, I did take a nap and I have no guilt about that whatsoever). Highlights of the rest of the week in training include hitting the 30 minute mark on the walking and 20 minutes of biking. And perhaps some strength training- I sent an email to the trainer I've worked with before and who worked with my mom for a long, long time to see if we could work something out. I'm still not a fan of weight lifting, but a lot of the reading I've been doing indicates that it would be a Really Good Idea. So, we'll see.