Monday night swimming

We got started kind of late, so it was much more technique stuff than main set, not really worth transcribing in detail even if I were mentally capable at this point of reconstructing it! I was knackered--but strange to say it was the most miraculously good swimming evening technique-wise, my hands felt like huge lovely bear paws and I felt like I was having amazing reach & body rotation and stuff, don't know what was up with that. Everyone was, like, "You're flying!"

Anyway, we did 2 sets of 3 x 100 descending, with ten-twenty seconds rest, to get a time to hold--I was starting at 1:45 and got down I suppose to 1:40 (getting a bit of extra rest, though)--then we did 3 more hundreds with a lot of rest, like on 2:30, trying to hold the fastest pace. Really it's a pace exercise, I am not sure I quite got it: but the first one was 1:40 and it felt pretty OK, and then I was worried that my times would slip because I was not wanting to swim more (the times really do slide when you're doing these without so much rest, last time I tried I could not hold 1:45 on a 1:50 interval) & so I worked a little harder for 2 and 3. The second was 1:38, and the third was 1:36--that's crazy, that extra rest makes a huge difference...

I did some lengths of butterfly during the hanging-around not-quite-starting waiting period at the beginning, it seems good. I am regretfully deciding that I will not sign on for the next Monday-night series after this one's done. We've got five more workouts in this session, and it's great for technique and fitness, no doubt--but it's extremely expensive compared to various other options, and I'm also not crazy about a workout that gets me home only at 10 at night on Monday. If I got to bed earlier on Monday, I would be more likely able to make it to the Friday-morning workout at CU which does not cost me any extra money since I'm already paying for it. (Spring semester schedule different in various ways that may make it easier to get more sleep during the week--actually who am I kidding, I always think this and it never is true!?! But I am only teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday, so really it is possible...)

Anyway, I'll leave it for January and February, and then go back in March if I find freestyle technique and/or fitness sliding with just the other. (I will need to find some more skills-and-drills-type workout in any case.) The Monday night sessions are just feeling very depopulated, that's the other fact of the matter--a couple of the faster swimmers are still hanging in, but all the medium-fast ones are gone now. I am not sure if this is seasonal or if they are migrating elsewhere--I think possibly the latter, though. And it is definitely not as interesting swimming only free! Oh, I must check out the CU master's swimming before Xmas and see whether it's worth getting in on--it's some very modest amount of money like maybe $100 for the whole semester so even if I only went once a week it would rather be worth it if it's any good...