Monday-night swimming

A great workout this evening, despite the fact (as always) that I dragged my feet on the way over--despite the fact that I am about a hundred times more a night person than a morning person, 7:45pm in midtown is psychologically rough, it comes after the early-evening lull...

I cannot reproduce all elements, but here's a stab at it:

Warmup: 300 yards (50 swim, 50 kick)

8 x 50 practicing flip turn at end

8 x 75, breathing every 2 strokes on the first 25, every 4 on the second and every 6 on the third (or 3, 5, 7 for bilateral breathers--I decided this was not the moment for me to practice, but I must start working more consistently on this)

4 x 200 pull (25 long, 25 2 long strokes 2 fast strokes, 25 "long strong turnover," 25 fast strong turnover, then repeat cycle for second hundred)

Hmmm, after the third 200 I was slightly regretting the upper-body focus in my gym workout this morning...

(I may have left something out, can't quite remember...)

And then a rather amazing final set, I liked this one (though again on the last few I was thinking that it felt a bit too much like the raspy hyperventilatey breathing of the last 800 meters of the half-marathon on Saturday, these fast sets have been lovely for the last six weeks because I've been doing most of my running pretty slowly, this evening I thought "hmmm, perhaps my body would like a little bit of a rest, like it's a good thing I'm not swimming again tomorrow morning..."--though right now my legs feel bizarrely springy and energetic again!):

4 x 75, on intervals of 1:45, 1:40, 1:35, then repeat two more times (with a minute of rest between each set)

I liked this one, this is how we are going to improve the speed on our timed 500s I believe. It's not that hard for me to hit and hold, say, 1:20 or even more like 1:18 for the 75. But by numbers 7 and 8, and then again with 11 and 12, your lungs are really desperate for more oxygen! An interesting sensation, I perversely enjoy it...

It is 10:12 at night and it's still 82 degrees. This weather is making me very unhappy--where's fall?!?