Choke on your own words (or pool water)

I knew it was coming, and I knew it was going to suck. Luckily, I got a pretty good night's sleep, and although I could still feel last night's run in my legs, I was generally in good shape. So once in the car and en route, I did the best thing I could do: turned on some Lamb of God, as loud as I could handle at 5:15am. If you're gearing up for battle, you need the right soundtrack.

Today was 400m TT day, and it was the last one of the season. With race season pretty much here, that's most of the high intensity work we'll need, so workouts will be more focused on building and maintaining speed, rather than all-out efforts. Since I haven't been swimming that well lately, inconsistent with how I perform, I didn't know what to expect. I was hoping to be in the neighbourhood of my last time (6:43), but I wouldn't have been surprised if I was seven minutes. These changes to my form are working, but it's tough to keep them integrated every day, and on those days when I'm between form (not quite the new style, but not the old), I just flounder in the water. During the warm-up, I worked on grooving a nice long stroke, finishing as best I can. During the shorter pick-ups, I increased the effort, but still goal number one was finishing the stroke. And then it was time to perform.

I voluntarily seeded myself third in the lane. We have one new swimmer who is the quickest in our little group, although she doesn't believe it. On an given day, I'm pretty even with the guy in second, but he's been outperforming me lately, so I gave him the spot. It would also give me something to chase. I pushed off the wall and tried to get into a "really hard but I don't want to cry" rhythm. I just tried to keep the stroke long, and push as much water as I could each time. As the lengths went by, I could tell I was closing the gap a bit to #2, and distancing myself from #4. So I just had to keep it up. By 300m, things were getting very hard, but from a quick glance at the clock, I knew I was close to my last effort. I just had to push through the last section, which was somewhat less than pleasant. In the last 30m or so, I was taking breaths much more often than usual. The reason for this was that I was just getting mouthfuls of water on half of them. Perhaps the buoyancy of swallowing water helped a little down the stretch, but oxygen would have been more useful. I hit the wall, lifted my head out and heard the coach call out 6:57. Since I left 20 seconds after the first swimmer, that puts me at 6:37 for the day, a six second improvement.

So things continue to improve. It may not seem like much, six seconds in two months, but it's in the right direction. And considering my legs feel like bricks, I'd bet that on a better day, I could take a few more off. But at the very least, this totals a 36 second improvement since January. That's not too bad. Sure, I would have loved to crack 6:30, but that wasn't happening. I'll take my 6:37 and be happy.

Since it's a holiday weekend, with no swim on Monday, we got beat a bit further just to give us a reason to recover. A few 200s with paddles, and everything was sore enough to ensure plenty of sleep this weekend.

Swim: w/u - OW simulation, 400 free, 300 pull
200 ez non-free, 15"
200 moderate pull, 30"
100 free as 75 ez/25 quick, 10"
100 free as 50 ez/50 quick, 10"
100 free as 25 ez/75 quick, 10"
100 ez non-free
400 TT (6:37)
4x100 ez, 10" as back/breast/pull/free
2x200 pull w/paddles, 30"
100 ez non-free
2x200 free w/paddles, 30"
c/d - 100 ez non-free, 100 ez pull
Total: 3400m

Run: 2.5 miles, ez