Swimming

Last weekend I went to a stroke clinic put on by my tri club. The coach gave lots of good instruction, and I was all set to apply it today during my swim (yes, this is the first time I've been in the pool since last Sunday - oops). So I get in and start warming up, and I'm feeling good. Strong. Tired, since this weekend's workouts consisted of a 90-minute brick on Saturday and a long run on Sunday, which are fairly long workouts for me at this time of year, but strong.

I timed my sets, which is sometimes a good idea and sometimes bad, depending on whether I'm going fast. Today's set included was 3x(100 easy, 4x50 fast). On the first 100, I somehow knocked like 7 seconds off of my previous best 100 time, and felt great. I was shocked to see that I had gone so fast - I thought maybe I had started my watch late, but I'm pretty sure that was an accurate time. So that rocked. But the workout went downhill from there. I couldn't get my act together on the fast 50s, and I was sloooooooooow. Apparently focusing on going fast wasn't working for me today, because when I tried to focus instead on staying long and pulling hard though the water, instead of focusing on the speed, I got faster. Seems that there's a lesson in there for this grasshopper.

In other news, I think I'm going to get a real actual live coach. One of the founding members of my tri club is trying to get his coaching business off the ground. He seems really knowledgeable, and is in fact a Level 1 coach, but because he's just getting started his rates are awesome. So my online training program has served me well for the past month, but I think it's time to move on. Yay!!