The Payoff

I've been doing this swimming thing for around 6 months. I've gone from barely covering 50m, to comfortably completing 3800m non-stop. Not only that, but I've gotten faster. I've worked pretty damn hard, and I'm seeing the results. I like that.

Today was our most recent test day, a repeat of a test from about 6 weeks ago: 8x100m on 4 minutes. This is a pretty tough day, so we got about 1200m in warm-up, and then it was go time. So that's what I did. Every bit of competitive juice I have in me was on tap. My pacing may suck, and maybe I could be a bit faster if I did a better job of that (my 100m strategy is: 50m hard, 25m all-out, 25m panic splashing). If I started at the same time as someone from the faster lane, I wanted to beat them. If I started 10 seconds behind someone I consider slower than me, I caught them. I sunk myself into a world of hurt. But my improvements were huge. Across the board, 6-10 seconds better than last time. My best 100 was 1:34, my worst was 1:43 (compared to 1:39, 1:51). Now if this new found strength shows up for our 750m TT test in a few weeks, I'll know that I'm ready for the season (ignoring my lack of OW and transition experience).

Swim: w/u - 400m ez free
300 as 100 pull/100 non-free/100 pull
200 as 25 quick/25 ez
2x50 hard, 30"
2x100 ez free
Main set: 8x100 on 4' (1:34, 1:35, 1:39, 1:40, 1:41, 1:43, 1:43, 1:42)
c/d - 300 as 50 breast/50 back/50 free
100 pull
Total: 2400m

Although I'm dead-tired, after work I will ...
Run: 3 miles @ 7.2 mph