Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Tuesday class/swim practice

Very good swim, too - I really enjoyed that one, though it certainly brought home to me for the umpteenth time how much stronger and faster my freestyle is than my other strokes....

From 5-6pm I went to the "core strength" class. It is not so much what I like, but I thought it was very good in its way, and probably in its not-what-I-like-ness very much what I need. Pilates-based, non-sweat-inducing, non-bulging-muscle-producing, but some very solid core work and a lot of the stretching that I am missing in my sporting life! High-quality teacher, which is the most important thing for me in the fitness class setting. I will definitely keep going through this intersession period and reevaluate at the beginning of February whether I want to sign up for the semester-length class also. I like how it's blocked next to the T-Th 6-7pm swim workout, that is an efficient use of time, and the stretching and body-awareness stuff is really valuable...

Then - SWIMMING!

Truncated warmup (class beforehand went a bit over, I was trying to extricate myself tactfully but had to wait to give my name to the teacher for her list): 100 free, 50 fly drill, 50 back drill (should have been 200 free, 200 IM drill)

8 x 75, on an impractically fast interval that I cannot remember and could not keep, basically just did it as one continuous swim (we had a new coach who was not very experienced and could not imagine how slowly our lane actually swims - I took things in hand and told him the appropriate interval for the next set, he was suggesting 16 x 100 on 1:40! That is JUST NOT RIGHT!)

12 x 100 on 2:00, with :30 extra set rest after each 4 (I led on these, and it was most satisfying, I felt like a truly competent and useful swimmer - ALSO, though I have not perhaps sounded especially enthusiastic about the core class, I felt thoroughly lengthened and stretched out in a way that wonderfully contributed to my freestyle form, so that was very good!)

100 easy swim

8 x 25 stroke in IM order (two times through, not two of each in a row) on :30 (also unrealistically fast, so it was just like 2 x 100 scrambling inelegant IM with no rest!)

100 easy back swim down

2400 yards total

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Just a little heads-up on the core-strength class -- if it delves deeply into stretching you might consider swimming easy for the pratice. Gerry's Rule of Thumb is a minumum of 6 hours between deep stretching and a workout.

Good work on the interval assignment for the hundreds! To translate to Caymanian masters lane assignments, those original intervals would be better suited to lanes 1 & 2.