Gosh, that was enjoyable - I have not been able to go to a real swim practice for a couple weeks - it is EXCELLENT! Not entirely blissful, due to a bit of confusion about intervals, but really very enjoyable indeed.
(And I actually got some good-quality sleep last night, which is almost unprecedented! I really am about to go on vacation...)
Warmup (truncated): 200 free, 100 fly (kick-drill-kick-swim by 25) (would have been 3 more hundreds in IM order)
First set: 12 x 50 on 1:15, first four fly-back by 25, then back-breast, then breast-free
Second set (I love this one, I can hardly think of a more efficient use of time for building fitness and pacing skills):
16 x 100 free, in sets of 4 and with :30 set rest
Each set of 4 on 2:05, 1:55, 1:45, 1:35 - a BEAUTY swim, a BUILD swim, a STRONG swim, a swim ALL-OUT
The very good thing is that I can actually just about (it is tight!) make those intervals. The bad thing is that I did not always get a chance to, because of lane confusion!
(And in fact we did not have time for the last hundred and swam an easy hundred cooldown instead - I did 50 back, 50 free.)
The problem in the lane can be summed up by saying that the men are faster, but the women are much better counters! This leads to a big problem on a set like this one. I sensibly slotted in behind M. (female issuer of the immortal words, some months ago, "Boys can't count!"), so she was the one who had the really high irk factor. The fastest fellows understood neither the letter nor the spirit of the set - they swam too fast for the first couple and then didn't make the interval for the second couple.
It is strange to me when people approach things in this spirit. It amounts almost to a creed with me that if one does not understand something, one must ask questions until clarity emerges! It is a very important part of my teaching - my students are sometimes slightly perplexed that I am asking such basic bread-and-butter questions again and again until I get an answer, but I honestly do not see how if one is unsure what a particular word means, or uncertain enough about the tone of a turn of phrase that one is not willing to utter in speech some sort of stab at an explanation, there is any point making broad interpretative observations! It is a good test of understanding, to try and put the most basic facts of the matter into language - it is a high standard to hold oneself to, as I think that if one is not doing this regularly and self-consciously, it can be hard even to identify and describe the patch of unknowingness or incomprehension...
2500 (truly enjoyable) yards total
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Boys can't count! (The clock is sometimes an issue, too. Although we have a couple of girls who have some difficulty in this regard as well.)
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