Thursday swim

I HAVE A REAL SWIM TEAM. I AM IN UTTER BLISS!

Just had to get that out of my system...

The hour goes by way too quickly - at the end all I wanted was to swim for another hour! The coach was slightly laughing at me & observed that she could see the endorphins had kicked in - she urges me to come to one of the hour-and-a-half workouts (there is a Sunday-morning one that would suit me well), and observes that on holidays the team often has a special two-hour workout, with five and six people in each lane and everyone swimming their guts out!

Warmup: 200 free, 100 reverse IM (only did first 50 of this); then 6 x 50 free at easy, medium, hard and repeat

Main set, which we had to curtail due to time but in theory would have moved through each stroke in reverse IM order:

150 kick (30 seconds rest), then 4 x 75 at easy, medium, hard, very hard with 20 seconds rest

We did the full set for free and breast, then shortened it as follows:

back: 150 kick, 4 x 50 back down, choice back (flags were not up)

fly: 4 x 25 fly on 10 seconds rest

200 reverse IM easy swim down (fly drill)

2050 yards total

I have been thinking that I would wait to have a few more swimming lessons till after marathon training is done - it is a question of financial resources as well as time and energy and attention. But in fact my breaststroke is scandalously worse than my other strokes! I was leading on all the other parts of the set (well, another woman led on the fly, but I was right on her tail!), and I really like leading the lane, it is enjoyable to me and I am suited to it because I have strong steady pacing and good endurance.

But I had to go to the back for the breast set, and I am so much slower than everyone else on that stroke that it is very discouraging to me! I have no gears, just one steady pace, and it is remarkably slow.

Hmmmm, I wonder whether I should just bite the bullet and devote a few Saturday afternoons and a heap of dollars to some more lessons with I.? She's most likely teaching only in Brooklyn now, too, so it adds an hour travel time each way - might not be sensible, I might just have to be patient on this one and see if I can wangle a bit of stroke coaching from one of the weekday lane swim folks. It is not as high-quality as the real lesson, that's the trouble! Must ponder...