Friday, December 18, 2009

Thursday swim practice

It was a very enjoyable one, too, only despite precautionary Claritin I have been with streaming eyes and nose all evening, and much congestion (also, due to my own inability to follow the imperatives of etiquette and hygiene and carry small packs of tissues, I was blowing my nose on randomly acquired restaurant paper towels and have practically rubbed it raw by now!).

I had coffee beforehand with former student and lanemate Joe, who is back from his new job in Singapore for a brief New York visit (very nice indeed to see him!), and teammate Julian, who was kind enough to give me a copy of his new CD! Which I am dying to listen to - but first I have to solve my iPod problems (helpful work computer cleaner-upper, who sorted out new email and anti-virus and system updates for all three of my laptops, seems to have inadvertently deleted iTunes including library - music library only currently on iPod, I have purchased this software that promises to help me remedy the situation but am in the meantime treating the iPod touch as my most precious and delicatepossession, since it is only repository of the library!).

I wasn't swimming fast, I haven't had much time to swim in the last couple of weeks, but I felt very strong and competent in the water - the drill work is good, I will keep that up.

Warmup: 400 choice (I did 100 free, 100 IM drill, 100 back, 100 IM), 50 kick

Then:

6 x 100 on 1:55 (I find this hard to keep up, haven't been swimming enough recently - but I think it would be a good goal for 2010 to get to the place where I could do 10 or 12 x 100 on 1:55 with great comfort)

2 x 150 free on 2:55
2 x 100 IM on 2:20
2 x 200 free on 3:50
2 x 100 IM on 2:20
2 x 150 free on 2:55
2 x 100 IM on 2:20

We had a couple bits of inadvertent rest as we regrouped, but on the whole I would say I am quite comfortable swimming those intervals - really I enjoy the pace for 200 free in the middle of a set like that more than I like the 100s on 1:55, which I can now do with some rest because of the flip turns, but the turns themselves leave me much more oxygen-starved than I would be otherwise...

I think I might not be able to go to a TNYA practice again until the last week of January, but I hereby resolve to go a LOT in late January and February, it is good for my swimming to swim with others who are faster than I! I must also note that this was the best-organized and least chaotic lane grouping in recent memory - everyone was swimming at similar enough speeds, everyone was able to count - though it is possible that I was the only person still doing fly instead of freestyle on the last hundreds of IM...

2650 yards total

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You may want to concentrate on your breathing now that you're reliably able to flip. Often breathing out more slowly and steadily through the nose makes one significantly less hypoxic.

In order to prevent water up the nose while flipping, we blow air out the nose, but often too quickly so there isn't enough air in the lungs while pushing off in streamline. While underwater with virtually no air, everything in your body screams at you to breathe.