Swimming May 26

Of all things I didn't imagine myself doing Monday, or ever, it was getting in a pool and swimming laps for training. After swimming an estimated 9-10,000 hours over my career (Seriously, I added it up) I've had enough swimming for any ten lifetimes but my wife was in a world of hurt after her leg day, was going to the pool to sit in the hot tub and I didn't want to sit around the house without her when I hadn't seen her all day.

So after a visit to SwimCo (which was interesting because I was always very picky with my suits and goggles and I think I may have overwhelmed the poor girl with questions about spec comparisons to equipment that hasn't been around for over a decade) we went to the Terwilleger Rec Centre. Steph hobbled off to the hot tub and I got into the pool. After my first push-off, I felt pretty good. A few strokes later... not so good. Dear God was I inefficient. The technique felt right, but I'm much larger and apparently less mobile than I used to be, plus my swimming-specific fitness has clearly tanked. I was actually breathing hard after a "relaxed" 100m.

I had a general idea in my head that I would warm up with 200-400m and then do 8-10 hard 50-100m sprints. I decided that 100m was a good enough warm-up, then tried a hard 50. I did it in about 38 seconds. To put that in perspective, my best time when I was fifteen was about 27 seconds. Granted that was with a dive, but even assuming the dive would have taken off a few seconds it still felt like I was moving just a bit faster than the average glacier. A few hard 50's later I'd dialled it in a bit and managed 32 seconds from a push. That was okay, but still. As a teenager I could've held a 32 second pace for 15 50's in a row with 15-20 seconds rest. I honestly thought that being literally twice as strong in every measurable way than I was back then would have made up for the shaky technique, but it really didn't. I think overall I did maybe 600m total in the 20 minutes I was in the pool (we arrived at 9:40 PM) . I will do this again and I will make it as regular a thing as I have to in order to put up some respectable numbers. It's a matter of pride now.