Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Day of bliss

It is outrageously snowy here, and the snow shows no sign of stopping any time soon - I dug out my real winter boots which I have only worn a handful of times since the year I lived in Cambridge, Mass. (2005-2006?), I was glad of them.

I worked pretty hard on Monday and Tuesday (my talk at Princeton yesterday went well!), and decided to take today roundly and wholly OFF - it was a day of play, with novel-reading and exercise EXCLUSIVELY. Headed down to Chelsea Piers on the subway, got there a bit later than I'd planned and only had time for 20 mins. strength before spin class started.

It was a very enjoyable class - my neighbor informed me that I had the easy bike, and it was true! Edifying - I can actually get a better workout on the easy bike, with faster cadence and steadier pedaling in hard gears, which really tells me I shouldn't hesitate to use easier gears when needed if I am not on the easy bike...

Had thought of finishing out some more strength stuff afterwards, but I was hot and damp and hungry - shower and lunch called. I read for an hour or two and digested, and then had a truly lovely swim. It was great! I guess I've been swimming regularly enough recently that I'm back in the groove. Oh, and I did open turns rather than flip turns for my hundreds at the end - I would guess that with open turns I can swim 1:50-51 (i.e. 1:55 interval is fine, 2:00 is pretty easy), but that with flip turns I am scrambling for 1:54-56 - I come off the wall much further and faster with an open turn than a flip. Gotta keep working on those, but in the meantime I might start using open turns again for freestyle bits in TNYA practice, or when I'm doing a hard set on my own.

20min. lower body
1hr. spin

Warmup:

600 free with every fourth length stroke (2 x back, 2 x breast, 2 x fly drill)

Freestyle drill:

2 x 100 right-arm, left-arm, catch-up, full stroke

2 x 100 as 50 6-3-6 (kick on sides), 50 free

2 x (2 x 50 drill-swim: first 2 front scull, second 2 fists)

8 x 75 kick-drill-swim by 25 (2 of each stroke in IM order)

6 x 100 with evens IM on 2:20, odds free on 2:00

2400 yards total

4 comments:

ShirleyPerly said...

Glad someone is enjoying some time off and the snow!

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Unknown said...

I completely understand your desire to be faster. However, if I were you I would try resist the temptation to go back to open turns, unless say, you were to ask Coach Conrad to watch you do both in warm-up and assess where the problems lie in your flip turns.

Part of problem with reverting to open turns is that the only way to improve flip turns is to keep doing them. As soon as you revert and feel faster, the temptation becomes greater and greater.

Distance off the wall is usually related to either force of push, proper streamline (hand over hand, biceps squeezing top of ears, core engaged). Streamline keeps your head down and stops you from popping up early.

Brent Buckner said...

Maybe compact cranks are in your future....