Saturday, November 15, 2008

Saturday swim practice

I had an ambitious but unrealistic plan to run and swim this morning, thwarted by the fact that I am a bad sleeper and (not unrelated) a recidivist alarm-snoozer and also by the need to eat breakfast and caffeinate pre-exercise.

On the bright side, I went to the pre-swim stretching session as well as the swim workout, and it seemed quite beneficial - more stretching and yoga-type stuff over the winter, that's what I think...

(I have been to a grand total of one yoga class all semester! That hamstring injury made it seem inadvisable for a while, and now that it's pretty much better I don't want to switch anything up so close to marathon time, so I have just let it go...)

Very good swim today. My technique felt poor, due to insufficient recent swimming; I noticed myself bending my neck to breathe in a way that I have worked very hard over the past six months to eradicate. Still with a lot of lung gunk, and generally rather knackered after a long week. But I enjoyed it very much, and the last long part of the set was a fairly easy endurance set - I could have gone on a lot longer, pity it's not a 90-minute workout!

Warmup (curtailed): 300 as free-fly drill by 25; 50 (would have been 200) back-breast by 25

3 x 200 free on 4:00 (I led on this - fun, but I had to work very hard, there was a fast guy right behind me! We came in pretty solidly around 3:30-3:32, that was good)

2 x 200 IM on 4:30

15 x 100 free on 2:00, with 1:00 extra rest after the first eight

2850 yards total (is that possible? Oh, I guess 'cause it was a mostly freestyle set we swam a couple hundred more yards than usual).

Good news: Coach Conrad is going to do a mini-flip turn clinic at Thursday's practice!