Blissful Thursday evening swimming

It simply defies rational explanation. But swimming makes me feel like a superhero! Seriously, I was so dazed and stupefied all day, it was not good--worked too hard earlier in the week, couldn't quite get myself together. I liked my run this afternoon, but afterwards I was hungry and tired and totally zonked out. I ate a good meal to refuel; nonetheless I was still in a daze--exhausted, scarcely believing that I was actually going to make it over to the gym for another workout.

But after one and a half lengths of swimming, I felt completely energized and insanely recharged! It really is bizarre, it cannot be endorphins, it is too quick (I almost always get it after the first length in the pool, quite unlike running where it's at least a mile to warm up and really often more like three or four before I feel great)--it is some physiological effect of buoyancy and the pressure of water on skin and the feeling of moving through the water that really just makes me feel supercharged...

(I am still swimming freestyle more slowly than in November and December, I'm guessing, and with a less acute sense of paces and "gears"--I went to Monday-night swimming very faithfully from August through December and freestyle technique and pacing and speed is the one thing we work on there, it's highly triathlete-oriented, so it is not surprising I have not really improved since then on that front. But I am progressing in other respects, I think, so it is all OK...)

This workout is lovely! I had the lane to myself (though I am thwarted, there is no swim this Saturday because CU has a home meet, I will have to try and get to the Friday-evening swim tomorrow although it will make me feel rushed), it was blissful, only marred by several bouts of acute cramping in the right calf while doing butterfly.

(Had to stop and cling to the side of the pool and make faces while I waited for it to pass off! An onlooker would think I am a lunatic, I am always saying the next bit of the workout to myself to try and remember it. I am sure the cramping has to do with running beforehand and general tiredness--something to watch out for. I have had it now and again before, but not so early in a workout, more like at the end of an hour and a half intense freestyle workout where some of it was with fins and I was swimming really hard.)

Similar rationale to the other day, intertwined ladder strands...

(Hmmm, then I went to the grocery store because I am making cupcakes tonight [a pleasant task!] for a very lovely and very dear friend who is not feeling very happy about her birthday and shopping has put the details out of my head, I cannot remember now at all how many I was doing of each thing, arghhh! Oh, I guess if I really pay attention I can reconstruct it...)

Warmup: 4 x 200 (100 swim, 50 drill, 50 kick)

Further warmup set: 5 x 50 (fly, free, back, free, breast), 10 x 25 with 5 yards fast and 20 easy, 10 fast and 15 easy, 15-10, 20-5, whole length sprint, then repeat for second five

Main set:

2 x 200 free, negative splits (I did 3:50 or so, twenty seconds rest, so say I could try those on 4:10 if I were doing three or four? hmmm, maybe more like 4:15 or 4:20 if I were doing more repeats...)

1 x 50 fly (25 swim, 25 drill)

2 x 150 free, descending by 50s (I did OK with these, but have lost sense of pacing I was working on in the fall--have now forgotten details of times, but was checking clock on the 50s--say I started on :20, came in on :17 and :13 on subsequent 50s, so that is more just steady, could not tell you stop time, maybe :09-:10--not bad though...)

2 x 100 back (75 swim, 25 kick)

The hour was almost over by this point, I had to skip the next bits which were basically some variant of 2 x 100 free descending, then a breaststroke thing with swim and drill, then maybe 2 x 50 "smooth" free -- because I wanted to do the last one, which was 200 IM. Very nice, except that the lap swim had started by that point and I only narrowly avoided several crashes which were really my fault as I was obstinately still swimming in the nice left-hand slice of lane [Ed. No, right-hand slice, it seems too lavish even when one has the lane to oneself to go right down the middle, I prefer to hew to the driver's side as it were on the way down but to swim back on the same side!] I had had to myself the whole previous hour! Crashes averted, however, and it was all good...

(Hmm, that's 2500, is that right? That's good, usually I am doing more like 2100 because it's a "short" hour--but I was the first person in the pool for warmup, right at six, and didn't get out till a few minutes after seven, so that's how I get really good use of my pool time--more feasible to get in promptly when it is pm rather than am...)