Swimming from the middle

The weather was looking a little risky tonight so my friend Kyla and I decided to switch up our normal Tuesday night bike ride to a swim instead.  We met up after work and the pool was packed with swim lesson groups and lap swimmers.  We shared lanes with some other swimmers for our warmup until a lane opened up for us. 

Here's the summary of our workout:
Warmup - 400 yd easy swim
First Set - 8 x 100 yd (back/free on odds, breast/free on evens) on a 2 min. interval
Second Set - 3 x 200 yd (free build within each 200)
Third Set - 300 yd kick
Fourth Set - 6 x 50 yd back stroke
Fifth Set - 10 x 25 yd sprints on the 40 (choice for stroke)
Cooldown - 150 yd easy swim

The wacky part of the workout was the fourth set.  I typically only do 25 yd of stroke work because my strokes tend to be slower than the friends I train with so I try to not fall too far behind and slow down the interval for the group.  During our initial set of 100's this meant that I did the first 25 as the stroke and then finished with 75 of free.

I mentioned to Kyla that I needed help in figuring out when to turn over for the back stroke in order to turn.  Kyla took this on and developed the fourth set just for me.  We started from the center of the pool in order to have 2 flip turns per each 50 instead of just one.  Before we started the set she had me practice a couple to count out how many strokes to go before turning.  For the record, I need 4 strokes past the flags before turning over to do my flip turn. 

It took the first two intervals for me to relax some and not freak out during the flip turns. The first few I was just vertically popping out of the water after the flip instead of pushing off the wall and streamlining.  I did the flips for all of that set but some weren't so pretty.  I really had to just slow down and relax.  It was good practice and I will definitely start trying to do more than 25yd of strokes at a time...well except for butterfly. That one still needs some work and strength!

Have you ever swum an interval from the middle of the pool? Kyla swore to me that it was normal for working on turns but I definitely felt a little goofy!