Well, it was somewhat irksome--it's spring break here--and nobody showed up to coach at 6. Or, indeed, to let us into the pool! We learned that a coach was on her way--but it was twenty-five minutes of hanging around the sordid locker room in bathing suits before we got in at almost half past the hour.
It is a contradiction I cannot quite explain, but the swim that followed was both fairly rousing/beneficial in terms of making me feel like I'd had a bit of coaching and a decent workout and at the same time very bad for my swimming morale!
In retrospect, I think that the coach's insistence that I really should do the lap swim class rather than masters swim over the summer was meant entirely well, and that all negativity was directed towards CU for administering the masters program so hopelessly that it will almost certainly be shut down.
(This seems to me reasonably likely. It's very chaotic, and there were only three of us there today swimming, which is ridiculous.)
But it was hard not to feel she was suggesting a demotion...
(Also I did one flip turn right at the start and hastily decided that if I was swimming short today, I could not stand to blow all my time floundering round at the wall! So no turn practice, but I think that was for the best, as it let me concentrate on freestyle technique and pacing, something I have been neglecting for the last week or two.)
Warmup: 200 free, 200 back
Set #1: 2 x 250 as 125 free/25 back on 5:00
Set #2: 4 x 250 free descending (on 5:15, 5:10, 5:05)
Swim down: 200 easy (50 free, 50 back, 50 fly down/breast back)
(Lane swim starts at 7, but due to the break it wasn't crowded, so I was at least able to finish the set...)
The same coach will be there Thursday-Friday-Saturday this week; she did not seem encouraging re: flip turn help, since this is not officially part of what they are meant to do in masters swim, but she says she will give me drills for long-axis strokes and that I should concentrate on those this spring given race performance as a priority and then ask summer lap swim coach to help with short-axis strokes.
2100 yards total
(Wait, that's very respectable, no wonder I feel like I had a good workout! I haven't been thinking enough about pacing recently to do a very good job really 'descending' those 250s of free, but actually it was a useful set, more related to what I'll be doing in that race than most of the swimming I've done recently...)
1 comment:
Yes, 2100 is a fine workout.
It sounds like there are a lot of things going amiss with the CU masters program. Nor am I sure what the relationship is between masters swim and lap swim class (or even what a lap swim class actually is).
However, I wouldn't get hung up on what this particular coach had to say. With three people in the pool, it is hard for me to understand why a motivated coach would not take a few minutes to help someone with turns.
Swim the workouts that she offers, but remember the experience of swimming masters with the Hammerheads!
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