Today I headed to the pool thinking it was just a normal Friday. I began the day by cleaning out my swim bag (side note: I found 2 suits, bra/underwear, 6 pairs goggles, and tons of swim caps in my bag!) and so I was ready for the new year of swimming! I didn't know that I would be kicking off the first 50's Fridays for 2013 with one of the hardest workouts imaginable.
This workout has been our lunch crew's nemesis since Thanksgiving. We screwed it up the first few times that we tried to recreate it until Brent put together a spreadsheet with the send off times. This makes it easy for us to follow the workout and is how we have finally mastered the workout. Truth time...it took us a few times to even write out the send off times correctly!
Brent got the inspiration for the workout from his daughter's college team. They swim it in a 50m long course pool and we swim in a 25yd short course pool. The workout is a descending set of 50's. You begin at a 1 min interval and then work down by 5 seconds until you hit 40 sec. That's one set. The first set requires one extra 50 but all of the remaining sets contain just 5- 50's. We did six sets for 31 total 50's. Once you get started it is pretty tough to keep track of the interval times...your brain just gets fuzzy from the oxygen deprivation! One person usually calls out the next couple send off times during the sets and that helps out a lot too.
My water logged send off sheet...it's generally a good practice to put your workout in a plastic zip bag!
I did an okay job on the workout today. I sat out on 2 of the 50's when I fell off the interval and needed rest to get back on track with the group. I will not lie...I don't hit the 40 sec interval. I end up swimming that as touch and go on the 45 sec but it works out that the extra time I need just comes out of the 1 min interval for the next set.
It's a tough workout for me but I can tell that the rest of the crew is working pretty hard during the workout too. There is hardly any talking during this workout and normally our crew is always chatting during our rest breaks. There just isn't much rest so that makes the workout go by quickly.
So far 2013 is off to a great start since I survived more of this workout than ever before! Plus, I signed up for the Nike Go the Distance challenge and selected 250 miles for my goal. I officially ended 2012 with 203.7 swimming miles. I'm excited to see if I can maintain consistent mileage throughout 2013 and continue to improve my times. Without my goal to swim more in 2012 there is no way that I would have been able to hang on and complete the workout today!
Sometimes it is hard to come up with a workout set when I'm swimming...either I'm swimming alone or don't want to swim the workout the group is doing. When I'm not feeling it I usually break my main set into a workout with a lot of variety to keep me motivated. Today was one of those days...I was the only girl in the pool and felt intimidated by my male swimming friends. The set that they were doing was 10 x 100m on descending interval times. The starting point was not one that I could maintain and then drop down from and it just intimidated me from the initial discussion.
I decided rather quickly to swim my own set instead. I started out without a clear plan in place and worked up the plan as I swam the first part of my set. I ended up deciding to do a 4 x 300m main set. I broke it down by 300 and did each 300 as something different. This is also something that I do to make it easier to keep track of my distance especially when we switch back to short course swimming! Overall the workout looked like this:
Warmup - 500m swim
Main set -
300m pull
2 x 150m Hannah's (middle 50 breast stroke)
3 x 100m free
6 x 50m free (easy/sprint)
Cooldown - 200m swim
It wasn't the greatest set ever but there was another variety to keep me going for a total of 1900m.
If you get into a rut and need some ideas here are some great places to look for workout ideas.
Swim Planner app - you supply the workout distance and your 100 time trial pace and it gives you workouts specific to your pace.
My other tip would be to ask others what workout they are doing! This has helped me to really improve my swim times through trying out other people's workouts. You have to make sure to maintain balance in your workouts. Every swim can't be a sprint session but try to keep some variety and hopefully that variety will translate into improved fitness for you!
Last week was a good swimming week for me since I managed to get in almost 5 miles of swimming! It worked out really well and two workouts really stood out for me. In between these two lunch time swims I read a recent blog post by pro triathlete Jesse Thomas on the Triathlete site. Titled, What's the Deal with the Old guy Jesse writes about joining the local high school team to improve his swim technique and speed. His nemesis...a high school girl! The overall moral of the story is that single sport athletes are always going to be stronger in their chosen sport than those of us that are multi-sporters.
Back to the workouts...on Monday the lunch swim group had a main set with 100m repeats done on a 2 min interval. In swim, the interval time includes your rest so that meant we were starting a 100m interval every 2 minutes. It was tough and I think I made it through 5 or so before I had to drop out of the workout and just swim easy to finish my distance.
Fast forward to Thursday and we had a set with 100m repeats on a 2:10 interval. It was amazing how much of a difference that extra 10 seconds made. I stayed in the whole workout and felt really great.
These workouts were fresh in my head last week when I started to read my August issue of Triathlete. In the Swim Training Tips section, Sara McLarty provides a quick comparison for switching between long course meters and short course yards times. I knew that 50m did not equal 50 yd but I just didn't think about it that much. I just trust my friends to come up with interval times and then I try to hang on! Little did I know!!! Turns out the normal intervals that I use for short course 100yds of (1:50-2:00) would equate to almost a 2:15 interval for long course. The 2:00 min interval for long course 100m that we have been doing is equivalent to a 1:45 on short course. Whoo...it pumped me up to figure this out. Sara's calculation is SCY time * 1.11 + 1.6 sec.
Now I know why I'm always scared to hear the interval times from my swimmer friends...the majority of whom are single sporters. They start at 2 min intervals normally and then work their way faster. It has been overwhelming but also really powerful to realize that I can hang with them on a faster interval if I just shut my brain up and swim. While I can't always last the whole workout at their intervals...I can last further than in the past. It has paid off in races too since I have noticed improvement in my swim times at races and also at our long course swim meet in June. I consider my swimming friends all my free coaches and am certain that they push me harder than I would on my own.
Needless to say, I definitely side with Jesse and have for quite a long time. If you want to be a better swimmer...swim with swimmers! Even if you swim freestyle only during the workout you will see improvement. I've been so lucky to have so many swimmer friends that let me swim with them. It's taken four years but I finally feel like I can keep up with the workouts.
Today I updated my USMS Master's Swimming online fitness log for my progress on the Nike Go the Distance challenge. I set my goal for this year to swim 150 miles in 2012!
Today I made it past the 50 mile mark which means I am on track to make it to my goal this year. Yeah!!! Today's Sunday Funday swim was a full group with all of Team Tininenko in attendance (Brent, Lauren, and Alexa) as well as myself and Carie. Carie's friend Hannah also came but did her own workout.
For the workout: we started with a 1000yd warmup ladder. The ladder breaks down as 400yd swim, 300yd drills (75 per stroke), 200yd kick, 100yd IM or pull. My friend Kyla and her son Karsten showed up during the drills portion of the warmup. She normally swims with us for Sunday Funday but she was on baby duty today. I had her watch some of my kick because lately when I've been doing breast stroke kick drills I feel off kilter. It's as if one foot comes up higher than the other. She thought it looked like my hips weren't even which makes sense. I've been feeling like my hips were a mess lately while I run too. I'm probably overdue for a visit to the chiropractor.
Next up was our main workout set. The workout Carie had picked for today called for 6-8 x 200 with the odds IM and the evens all free descending pace. They selected a 4:00min interval which would give them plenty of time to recover for the descending pace challenge. I decided to go with a shorter distance of 150 on a 3:00 min interval and increase the number of reps. I managed to get in just shy of 11 reps while the others did the 200's. For the first 8, I did a 25yd stretch of backstroke in the middle on the odds and 25yds of breaststroke on the evens. For reps 9 & 10, I did pull and then for the 11th and final I only got in 100yd of straight free.
We did an easy cooldown and then hit the hot tub. The hot tub was super crowded tonight with some other people plus our group of 6. We might have exceeded the occupancy limit but the lifeguard didn't say anything to us.
On Monday I met up with my friend Lori to swim at lunch. I have to swim shortened workouts when I swim at lunch but Lori still made sure that the workout packed a punch. We both swam our own warmup and then decided on a main set.
Lori picked 100's with a twist. I should have known when she picked a 2:00 min interval that it wouldn't be a breeze. We started our intervals from the deep end of the pool and the twist was that we would finish off the wall on each repeat. And why in the world would you finish an interval off the wall...so you could tread water of course!
Yes, Lori had us doing 100's with active recovery between them. That meant that we began each interval from a complete dead stop in the water with no push off the wall. That was almost more difficult than the treading water. On the 5th interval, I finally asked how many intervals we were doing! Eight was Lori's reply...great, still 3 more to go!
After finishing up with the 100's, we moved on to Lori's favorite swim item. Over/Unders. This is where you swim under water, holding your breath for 25 yds and then swim back over the water ie backstroke for recovery. I put fins on and still only got 2 done in one breath. There is something very mentally challenging about doing these and I just haven't figured out yet how to relax while doing them. I swim the under with my arms in streamline and doing a flutter kick. Most of my friends swim doing a dolphin kick for the swim but I'm not so great with my dolphin kick.
In the end, I ended up getting just over a mile in for my lunch swim which was great.
Every year in January, US Masters Swimming hosts a One Hour Postal Swim Meet. The objective of the meet is to swim as far as you can in one hour. It is a national event in that anyone can compete from wherever they want. You have the entire month of January to swim and submit your results.
I'm really lucky that our Masters club get together to swim the One Hour swim together. This year the meet was on Saturday and it kicked off bright and early at 5:30 AM with registration. I'm not a morning person so this is always one of the most challenging aspects of the meet. We hold two heats and most people swim a heat and count a heat. Each swimmer should have a counter and that person is responsible for keeping track of the swimmer's lap splits and distance.
3rd from the left and I'm getting some last minute coaching from Carie.
My friend Carie offered to count for me again this year. She is a great friend and she always coaches our Sunday Funday workouts. My friend Lori and I shared a lane and lined up in the lane next to our friend Brent. This year was the first time that we filled the pool and had to send people to the 2nd pool. Pretty impressive turnout with 50 swimmers!!!
Our awesome club President Jeff Spencer kicking off the meet
The first heat of swimmers got started at 6 AM. Carie and I had agreed that she would tell me when I hit the half way point and also when I had 10 minutes remaining. My goal this year was to hit the 2 mile mark. As we got the one minute warming for the start time I slowly lowered myself into the water...it was soooo cold.
Ready, Set, Go!
As we got started it took me a few laps to feel like I was settled into a pace. I decided to count laps by counting up to 10 (500yds) and then starting over. I thought this would help me stay focused and see if I was on pace at the halfway point. It also helped me to keep track of just how much time I had left after passing the halfway point. Swimming for an hour non-stop can get a little boring so anything to keep your mind off of it is great.
At the 30 minute mark I had already made it past the one mile mark and figured I had a cushion of about 50-100 yds. I couldn't give up my focus or pace. At the 10 minute warning, I knew that I could easily swim 500yds in the time remaining and that I was going to make my goal. In the midst of this time, I came upon Lori stopped in our lane. Right as I passed it she started swimming again. Turns out someone decided to blow a 5 minute warning whistle and she thought it meant our hour was up. She wasn't happy about it because it cost her 10-15 yds while she tried to figure out if it was over or not.
Lori and I after we finished.
The final minute went by quickly and when the whistle went off I was in the middle of the pool. My official distance was 3440 yds. The first thing I did when we were finished was swim down to the bottom of the pool and retrieve a dive toy that had been resting on our lane line the entire swim. Then I confirmed with Carie that I hit my goal and had a celebratory cooldown. It was so awesome to do some back and breast stroke since all I swam for the hour was freestyle. My muscles were ready for something different.
Arkansas Masters 2012 One Hour Swim
After the cooldown, all the participants gathered together for a group picture and then it was time for the 2nd heat to get started. Carie had a friend counting for her that is just getting into swimming. She was curious about the meet but a little scared so counting was a good introduction into what the meet is all about. Brent, Lori, and I took over the hot tub and enjoyed a nice soak before cheering on our friends during their heat.
I think the top distance swam was 4800 yds and there were quite a few in the 4000+ range including Lori and Brent. This was my third year to do the one hour swim and in that time I have added 500 yds to my hour distance. As one friend said, I can now report that I swim at 2 mph!
My good friend Carie posted a link today about the US Masters Swimming's Go The Distance event sponsored by Nike. It is the most popular USMS event each year and she had me on board with the mention of FREE PRIZES!
How it works is that you track your distance swam for the whole year. You can log your distance daily or monthly, whatever works best for you! Once you surpass certain milestones, you get a free prize. All of this and it is a free program. Here are the stats from last year's participants: In 2011, more than 2,000 swimmers swam more than 50 miles; 547 swam 365 miles and two swimmers made it to 1,500 miles.
I set my goal at 150 miles for the year. I've never tracked my swim distance on a yearly basis so I really have no clue if this is an achievable distance but I thought it sounded like something good to shoot for. Below are the prize levels:
Milestone
Nike Swim Award
50 miles
GTD Nike Swim swim cap
100 miles
150 miles
200 miles
250 miles
Nike draw string bag
300 miles
365.25 miles (average mile a day)
400 miles
500 miles
Nike Swim suit
750 miles
1000 miles
1250 miles
1500 miles
Here's where I am at so far in the challenge. I have logged in 3 swims of various distances. It will be fun to track my distance over the coming year.
If you want to join in, visit United States Masters Swimming to sign up. There are some other fun programs you can do including the One hour Postal Swim that takes places this month. My Masters club is hosting our postal swim on the 21st and I'll be trying to get to the 2 mile mark this year!
I love the various holidays because the gym offers free guest days and that saves me $8 to swim with my friends! This week I've swam 4 of the past 5 days and gotten to swim free for 3 of those days. I love free guest days and I love having awesome swim friends who push me with tough workouts in the pool. Here's what the last 3 days looked like:
Black Friday Swim - I met up with Kyla after some early morning shopping at 9AM. The kids swim team was also swimming so Kyla and I had to swim in the open swim area since all the lanes were taken. We decided on a set of 15 x 100 broken out as 5 x 3 descending on the 2:00 interval. The sets were freestyle for sets 1, 3, and 5 and IM order strokes for sets 2 and 4. We did another mini set after that and ended up with a good workout.
Saturday Swim - Brent joined Kyla and I on Saturday morning and started us off with a 1000 yd warmup that had 400 swim, 300 drills, 200 kick, and 100 pull. The workout itself was a 200 then 2 x 100. I did 150's instead of the full 200 and then focused on doing the 100's fast since we did then a little faster than my normal interval. We did the set as 200, 2 x 100, 200, 2 x 100, 200 for a main set of 1000. We tacked on some fun 50 sprints on the end with 25 sprint, 25 recover in IM order doing each stroke twice. It was a good workout and we all enjoyed hot tub time afterwards!
Sunday Funday - Today the Big Fish showed up for our weekly Sunday Funday swim. We had 6 of us in the pool including Brent, Carie, Lori, Jeff, and Scott. Normally our Sunday Funday is Brent, Kyla, Carie, and I so it was fun to have the others join us. Unfortunately for me, some of these guys are really fast swimmers so I knew that I would have to modify the workout in order to keep up. Our warmup included sculling drills and that wore out my arms pretty early on:( The main set was supposed to be 10 x 150 with odds pull and evens swim building the 2nd 75 faster. The fast kids were doing these on a 2:30 interval...my normal 150 interval is 3:00. I modified to do the sets as 125 pull then 100 swim builds. This allowed me to stay on the 2:30 interval with the group. We did some more sprint/recover 50's at the end to finish up the workout.
Whew, 3 days of swimming in a row equals one tired girl but I loved every minute of swimming with my friends. They are always encouraging and I know I'm getting a tough workout each time.
For the first week, most of my HBBC points came from my swimming workouts. I'm hoping to get more runs in this week and hopefully 1-2 swims for the week. I know I can't swim as much as I did the last few days but the pool is such a great form of active recovery for running.
A few days ago, I was discussing an upcoming baby shower that we are throwing for my friend Kyla with her. She is having her first baby in early December! We were talking through the invite list and trying to go through the various groups of people to include...running friends, biking friends, and swimming friends. When we went through the swimming friends list I asked if Hannah 150's should be invited. You see, I have only met Hannah once but I have heard her name so many times because the Hannah 150 is named after her and it is a staple in our swim workouts.
Fast forward to tonight and I joined my friend Kyla for a swim workout at her gym. Normally I don't swim with her during the week so it was fun to see different people in the pool in the after work crowd. There was some interesting form going on that's for sure!
Kyla and I didn't have a plan to follow. Our goal was to have an easy and relaxing swim workout since we had a meet on Saturday and then a tough swim on Sunday. We got started with easy warm-up after spending a few minutes trying to catch the attention of our friend Brent who was already in the middle of a workout when we got there. Kyla even threw a pool buoy at him and he didn't notice! He finally took a rest break and we were able to say hi!
After swimming a few hundred for warm-up we did a kick set alternating different kick strokes. Then it was time to start the workout and Hannah 150's were on deck! The Hannah 150 is made up of a 50-free, 50-stroke, 50-free. These can be done on whatever interval you want and are usually done in IM order for the middle stroke section. I don't know the full story behind them or when they were officially decreed as the Hannah 150 but in the 2-3 years I have been swimming with my friends they have always referred to this set that way. I think Hannah used to regularly swim with the group and this was her favorite interval to recommend.
Anyway, tonight we did a set of 6 - Hannah 150's and I did mine in IM order but by 25's instead of 50's. So for the first interval I did 25-fly, 25-back. Then on the second one I did 25-back, 25-breast. We went on a 3:00 minute clock which was a little slow for Kyla but gave me a little more rest. I used to always swim these as straight free while the group did the stroke work so it is a big change for me to tackle the stroke work in the set.
Back to the baby shower, before we decided on doing the Hannah 150's for our workout Kyla told me that after our conversation about the invite list on Monday she reached out to Hannah and told her that I had asked if "Hannah 150" should be invited! Too cute and now you all can share in spreading Hannah's fame by taking her interval to your pool too.
Today the Arkansas Masters Swim Club hosted an indoor meet at the Walton Life Fitness Center. This is a corporate fitness center and we were very lucky that the organizers were able to secure the facility for the meet. It is a great pool and we had a great turnout of around 27 people for the meet.
My good friends Kyla, Carie, Brent, and Lori were also competing. Brent and Lori were also part of the organizing committee for the meet so they were also working as starters and officials. There were some other friends at the meet but also some people that travelled from Oklahoma City and Tulsa to compete.
If you are familiar with Masters then you know that you can sign up for just 5 individual events in a meet. There were 17 different events in the meet today and I selected four to compete in. I had decided early on to compete in the 100 and 500 yd free events. I was never a swim team member and this is only my second swim meet as an adult. I branched out and decided to add on the 50 back which unfortunately was immediately after the 100 free. I also polled my friends and decided to enter the 100 IM event.
We started off the meet with easy warm-up. I practiced my flip turns even doing several backstroke turns to just make sure I could handle it for the 50 yd back! At the end of the warm-up time, Carie and Kyla talked me through how to do a backstroke start. I tried it a couple times using the starting block but my start just looked like a back belly flop. I tried it by holding on to the edge of the pool and that worked a little better and I was able to get an arch in my back for the start. I did one dive start from the edge and did a very easy 25 fly to practice for the IM. The starting blocks at the Fitness Center are really tall and I'm very nervous about using them so I planned to do my dive starts from the edge of the pool instead.
First up for me was the 100yd free. I was in Heat 1 with Carie next to me. It was great to have a friend and training partner next to me to calm my nerves. Kyla captured this video of me doing the 100 free! I submitted an entry time of 1:41 and was shocked to swim a 1:22:04.
My second event was the 50yd backstroke. I didn't get a huge rest between the two events and it was tough. I swam an easy 50 between the two to try to keep my legs warm but it was tough to have such a short break between events even though I was in the 2nd heat. I submitted a time of 50 or 55 sec for this one and managed to swim 43.68 seconds. I did okay on my flip turn but felt like I was swallowing a ton of water and drowning on the 2nd half of the 50:(
My third event was the 500yd freestyle. I was in the first heat for this event and thought I would be swimming next to Kyla. But when we were on deck we realized that they had changed the heat assignments and Kyla was moved into the 2nd heat. The challenge for this event was keeping track of the number of laps. They forgot to have volunteers do the lap counters for the first heat so we were on our own. I submitted a 9:00 time on my registration and again beat my expectation with a time of 8:09:89!!! I was really proud of my time for this event and know that I worked hard for it.
My final event was the 100 yd IM and I was in heat 2. I don't do a ton of stroke work so this distance appealed to me because it was just 25 yd of each stroke. That is the perfect distance for my butterfly skill level!
I did my dive start from the edge and then started on the fly. Just last week Carie showed me what she calls the survival fly which has a long recovery on the front of the stroke. I have rhythm challenges with my dolphin kick so I tried to use this to slow down and cover the distance.
If you open the pic bigger, you can see me doing fly!
Next up was the back stroke which went a lot better than the 50 where I felt like I was drowning.
At the end of the backstroke, I counted strokes from the flags and then flipped to my stomach to hit the wall and turn into the breast stoke.
My breast stroke went well and before I knew I was sprinting in the final 25 yds of freestyle.
My predicted time was 2:00 and I finished in 1:35:31. There was just one little problem...Carie was watching my heat and she noticed that I did something illegal during my turn between backstroke and breast stroke. Apparently, you are not allowed to fully turn onto your stomach. So I should have been DQ'd for the 100 IM but since there weren't any starts/turns officials today I didn't get DQ'd. The only problem is that I know I messed up so I'm pretty bummed about it. Kyla and Carie tried to explain what I did wrong to me but I still don't know how exactly I messed up. Needless to say...we'll be practicing IM turns for sure.
Overall, the swim meet was a great event and I had a good time participating. The meet souvenir was a super soft cotton long sleeve shirt with the Arkansas Masters club logo on the front of it. The club also hosted a social after the meet with yummy lasagna and salad. I was bummed about my 100 IM issue but even with that little hiccup I was super proud of all my times in the events. Doing this swim meet was outside my comfort zone but having so many great friends also swimming made it a great time.
The Arkansas Masters Swimming club put on a very unique event today. Our fearless club president,
Jeff Spencer, came up with the idea to swim a 40 mile relay from the southern edge of our local lake to the dam at the northern edge of the lake. The event was called The Long Dam Swim and all of the participants got to leave with the moniker of Dam Idiot!
I was assigned mile 38 in the relay. The event kicked off Friday evening at 5:30 PM and finished around 2:30 PM on Saturday. Around 62 swimmers participated which meant most of the miles were covered by a group of 2-4 swimmers. The swimmers were protected by a flotilla of kayaks, jet skis, and ski boats. This event was a logistical challenge with swimmers being given pick up locations and times for various boat ramps along the 40 mile route. My pick up spot was just across from the dam where we finished up the swim.
Our group was picked up by a boat and we met up with the rest of the flotilla and then got under way. Mile 37 was covered by two of my friends Carie and Kyla. Mile 38 was myself, AJ, and Jason who was challenged to participate in the event by a friend. It was Jason's first open water swim ever and he did great. Our mile was fairly easy except we had some confusion on where we were finishing up so we all ended up doing more zig zagging than we would have liked. We ended up doing around 1.2 miles which was great for me. The water was clean and cool and there wasn't a lot of wake.
The final group headed out to swim across the dam headway and we all drove across the dam to the park site where our post swim party was going to be. A couple of us went ahead and swam out to meet the final swimmers and enjoy more of the relaxing lake water. The post race party was a nice potluck with hot dogs and snacks under a pavilion. Below are some pics from the event that other participants shared on Facebook.
This is the logo for the event and if you look at the tail of the Beaver you can see a sketch of the lake and the route. Pretty clever logo! Below is the full version of the map which shows just how crazy shaped our lake is!
Today I had a swim workout on deck which was perfect since the temps continue to be extremely hot. I showed up at the pool and there were a ton of kids there. What's up with that? 11:00 AM is supposed to be lap swim time! Apparently one of the freshmen football teams was having a post workout pool party. The lifeguards had left a few lanes open so that the kids could swim.
The Masters swimmers sort of discouraged the kids though by swimming in that area too. Honestly the kids were mostly spending their time in the dive well doing the diving board and water slide so it wasn't like we were that mean. I started out doing some warmup laps and got about 400m in for my warmup. My friend Carie has already had to go back to work for school (she's a librarian) and she is normally our workout coach. The girls were debating what to do and polling our other friends who were already in their workouts. I decided to go with one of my suggested workouts for my half ironman training plan.
This workout called for a double ladder of 400, 400, 300, 300, 200, 200, 100, 100. I decided to count my warmup 400 as my first rung of the ladder. For the second 400, I did straight freestyle. For the 300's I spiced things up with 100m pull, 150m swim, 50m breast stroke. The 200's were 100m pull 100m swim and the 100's were just straight swims. I decided to add 2 x 50m to complete the ladder and sprints just don't get any easier, do they?!?
The pool was busy today with the football kids and all of the Masters swimmers. My workout took a little longer than everyone else so I didn't get much time to chat with people. I spent most of the time just doing my own workout and taking the appropriate rest intervals for my sets. I am really thankful to my friends who have taught me the discipline to do swim workouts so that in times like today when I do them by myself I stick to the plan.
After the workout I treated myself to a sno cone and an afternoon nap! I love having Friday afternoons off of work!
I had one vacation day left that I had to use by the end of this week so I took today off from work. I had a vet appointment scheduled this morning for Hershey but that was my only plan for the day. I normally go to lunch time Masters swim laps on Fridays but decided to go today since I was free.
I got to the pool right when it opened at 11:00 and my friend AJ was also pulling into the parking lot. We shared a lane and got started on the workout. We were slow to start since we thought another friend might be joining us but she must have gotten caught up at work. The warm-up we decided on was 300m of easy swimming. After the first 100m I had to jump out of the pool and switch goggles. The ones I started out with were leaking just enough to bother me.
After the warmup we moved to a 300m set that was mostly kick. We threw a swim in the middle for AJ to compare her kick while swimming to her kick during kick work. For some reason, she finds kick sets to be painful and we were trying to figure out if she was kicking differently.
Our main set for the workout was a descending ladder that started at 400m and went down to 300m, 200m, then 100m. The fun part was that the final 50m of each ladder rung was done on a fast pace. We took a 20 second rest interval between each ladder and that last one was tough!
We finished up the workout with some more form work by doing a variety set that included pull, back kick, free kick, pull, stroke, and free kick. This ended up adding 300m to the workout so we tacked on another 100m cooldown to end up with an even 2000m for the day!
The weather has been so hot lately so the pool was actually pretty refreshing. The water was really cloudy today which made it tough to see even the end of the pool. For quite a bit of my swim, I kept thinking of the song from Dave Matthews called "Don't Drink the Water" which kept my mind off the swim and distance. I also counted strokes during the long sets to keep myself focused and not slacking during the easy portions of the longer distances.
It is Summer Hours season at my office so my weekend started off Friday at 11 am. We work an extra hour per day in order to leave early on Friday. I go in early on Friday too so that I can leave at 11 am instead of noon so that I can go to lunch hour Masters lap swim at the Memorial Park Pool.
This was my first week to go to Friday lunch swim. I had been travelling the past two weeks since the pool had opened and missed those sessions. The pool was full when I got there and I spent a few minutes trying to figure out which lane my friends were in. The lap swim starts at 11am but I don't get there until 11:20 so I generally miss out on the warmup. Friday I swam with Carie and AJ and we did one of Carie's workouts from her time in Omaha Masters club. Carie keeps a stash of these workouts in a small Ziploc bag and she picks a new one out for each workout. The workout we got included a bunch of 100m repeats and none of us knew what time to use for the interval since we haven't been swimming long course that much yet this summer. We all started on a 2:00 min interval which we held pretty well for most of the first set of 6 x 100. Between the 4th and 5th, we took a little more rest but then got back onto the interval. Little did AJ and I know that there was another set of 100m and that they would need to be faster than the first set. We talked it over with Carie and she thought we swam the first set too fast so we slowed it down to a 2:05 min interval for the next 5 x 100. It was a good workout and ended with an easy cooldown. There is something great about circle swimming a tough workout with your friends! We were all business during our sets but we had fun between sets!
Saturday morning I headed out from my house for a run. I had intended it to be my long run but I knew within a few steps that it was going to be a tough run. It was warm and humid out and the hills around my house kicked my butt. I just couldn't get my head in the game and overcome the external challenges. I pushed myself to get a total of 4 miles which is better than nothing! After I finished I took my dog for a walk and got another mile in with her. From there, I headed out to the lake for an open water swim with AJ. We parked and saw that the swim beach was very different looking this year...there was no beach. The water level in the lake is really high so the swim beach is somewhere under the water. We were both a little concerned with all the geese hanging out in the area but luckily they didn't bother us any. The swim went really well and we did two loops on a course that is an out and back. We practiced sighting and buoy turns and were together for the first loop almost the entire way. The second loop we held different lines but stayed on about the same pace the whole time.
Sunday morning AJ and I met back up for a bike ride from the Arvest Ball Park in Springdale. This is much closer to AJ's house so this is more of her territory than mine. I've only ridden from that spot a few times but it is nice to mix it up and try out new routes and terrains. We hadn't really discussed a route just wanting a distance of around 40 miles. At 8am it was already super warm and sunny and we decided to stop at 10 mile increments for a water/snack break. At our first stop, we talked about the lack of gas stations along this route and thought about what route changes we could do. AJ thought she could put us on a loop course and she proclaimed that it would be 38 miles. The saving grace for this route was that we would pass a gas station...perfect for a mid-ride Gatorade stop! We decided to switch to AJ's route and we soldiered on...enjoying the shade when possible. We passed a couple funny sights. The first was someone fueling up their car using a gas can in their yard. The second was a farmer calling his cows to come home for feeding time. It was something funny to hear him call out to the cows and them moo back. In the end, our ride ended up exactly at 38 miles just as AJ had predicted.
It's been about two weeks since I've done a swim workout. Early morning lap swim started two weeks ago at our outdoor pool and I have yet to go to a workout. I'm not the best morning person but I'm hoping to go at least twice a week.
Today I stopped by the pool after work to pick up my pool pass I bought on the first day the pool opened, Memorial Day. Yep, that's a long time to skip the pool. My last swim was actually during my triathlon races the first weekend of June.
I managed to get there before the swim team kids and got a lane to myself. The lap timer clock was at the end of my lane and that motivated me to do a workout versus a mindless swim. I did an easy warm up and then settled into sets of 100m. I did 3 sets of 3 x 100m with a 50 m recovery swim between each set. I went on a 2 minute interval which allowed me about 15 sec rest after each 100m. I probably should have gone on a faster interval but figured since it had been awhile I should ease back into it.
It felt good to get back in the pool but I really need to get there during the lap swim hours. The pool is set up for long course then and there is a huge difference between long and short course especially when training for triathlons. Our Masters group is supposed to be offering workout suggestions during the early morning workouts so that will be an added bonus when I get my butt there! My goal will be to get there next week and until then I'll be looking forward to the lunch hour Masters swim on Friday afternoon!
Today was the Arkansas Masters One Hour Postal Swim Meet. The Postal Swim Meet is a unique setup since it is a national swim meet. Each club hosts their own swim event, results are then mailed into the host club, compiled and overall results determined sometime in mid-March. In this meet you get to compete both locally and nationally which makes it fun. A fun surprise this year was that T3 Training Systems offered to pay the registration fees for all the swimmers. They are a new triathlon coaching group in our area and seem to be really nice.
What's not so fun though is actually swimming for an hour straight, that's right no stopping! The other not so fun part is just how early this meet is held in the day. Swimmers have to report in at 6AM for the 6:30 heat and since I wasn't sure which heat I would be swimming in I headed into the gym then. I got lucky and swam in the first heat and then stayed on deck to count laps for a friend in the second heat.
The race is pretty uneventful...there is a start, then lots of swimming, and then a whistle blowing to stop. I was sharing a lane with my good friend Lori who is a swimming machine. Lori got me into the Masters group last year and she is part of my Sunday swimming crew. I swam freestyle for all but 25 yds of the event. I was a huge wuss and skipped doing flip turns. This race is all about endurance and trying to keep focused and on pace. Lori swam around 4300 yds and I kept trying to figure out the gap between our paces. I think she was doing around 4 lengths to my 3 lengths of the pool.
Last year I entered the One Hour Swim after a 3 month hiatus from swimming so I was looking forward to having a better endurance base this year. My goal was to beat last year's distance but I didn't have a specific distance in mind. I let my friend Carie (who was timing and counting my laps) know my distance from last year. She promised to give me a sign if I needed to pick things up so I thought I was doing okay since she never said anything. I was really surprised to finish and hear my distance though.
Last year I swam 2935 yds....today I swam 3295 yds. So close and if we round up it would be 3300! I'm pretty happy with that improvement. If only you could have seen how red my face was after the race...proof I was working hard. If you look close in the pic above you can see how red my face was. I'm on the deck behind the 3 on the white banner. Another great event put on by the Arkansas Masters club.
There's still time to enter, even if your club doesn't participate. You can individually register and complete the event. You will need a timer to keep track of your lap splits and record your distance. Check out the USMS site for more details.
Sunday afternoon swims are a highlight of the winter off season for me. My swim buddies Kyla, Carrie, and Brent have a standing weekly swim meet up on Sunday afternoons at their corporate fitness center. I go as a guest and figure the guest fee is well worth the intense workout!
Today we started with a 400yd warmup, 300yds of drills, and 200yds of kick. The drills are done as 75yd per stroke. Brent and Kyla are swimmers that also do triathlons so they don't stand for any of this steady swimming of free style as a workout stuff that most triathletes do! Carrie is an awesome swimmer who has a collection of tough workouts that she shares with us.
The first main set of the workout was a 1000yd ladder. The ladder went like this: 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 150, 100, 75, 50, 25. For the shorter steps the rest time was around 10 sec. The longer ladder steps of the 150-200s got 30 sec rest. I'm a little slower than the others so sometimes I have to shorten the workout to not fall too far behind. I only shortened one of the ladder steps and instead of doing the 200, did a 150. We did a bunch of different strokes during the ladder...I managed the first 25yd with butterfly but that was all the butterfly for me. We all finished and took a short rest break before starting the second main set.
The second main set was 12 x 25 on the 1 minute. The trick was that the 25's were done with dive starts and were crazy fast sprints. I'm not comfortable diving off the blocks so I just did my dives from the pool deck. I also didn't feel comfortable with shallow dives so I just did a wall push for those starts. Our group was hitting the wall around 18-20 seconds for each sprint. Let me tell you, I needed all that rest to get ready for the next sprint! These were a tough finish to the workout especially since we were trying to minimize the number of breaths during each sprint. The goal was no breath but I'm not there yet! These sprints definitely had my heart rate up super high.
We finished up with a short cooldown. Typically we close out our Sunday swims with hot tub time but Kyla and I both had things to do after and we couldn't stick around.
I'm so lucky to have such talented friends that let me join in their workouts. Sometimes their pace is more than I can handle but I try to hang on for as long as possible. I have improved so much in the last year in both speed and form because of these great swim buddies and their workouts.
Saturday was the Ozark Open Water Swim at Hickory Creek park on Beaver Lake. Hickory Creek is towards the southern end of the lake and is somewhere I had never been to swim before. The weather had taken a huge cooldown and I woke up Saturday morning to an air temp around 54 degrees. Brrrrrr!!!
A Chilly Race Morning!
The swim offered three distances to choose from 1K, 2K, or 4K (.6mi, 1.2mi, or 2.4mi.) The swim benefits one of the local youth club swim teams. One of the event sponsors was Proctor & Gamble so the schwag bag was full of goodies! Registration was pretty easy except for one little annoyance...the park entry fee was not included in the cost of registration. As you got body marked, the volunteers asked for your $3 park entry fee since Beaver Lake is part of the state park system. I think for a registration of $30 they could cover that fee for you.
Check out the race schwag!
The air temps were chilly but you could tell the water wasn't going to be all that cold from the steam coming off the lake. My friend Anjeanette was doing the race too. Neither one of us wanted to take off our street clothes until the last possible minute. We loaded up one bag with our towels and things and headed down to the lake shore. Several of the Masters Swimmers that I know from the pool were there and a strong showing of local triathletes too. It was fun to catch up with everyone while we waited for the race to start.
The race was an in-water start and was an out and back course. The 4K racers simply did the course twice. I took a few seconds pause after the whistle start to let the melee clear out some. It helps to wait just a second or two if you don't like getting kicked or trampled in the water! My sighting on the way out to the turn was great but once we made the turn I struggled a little since the sun was in my eyes. I was near someone at pretty much all times but didn't feel crowded or get run into that much.
The race finish line...and the long run out of the water!
I came into the finish knowing that we had walked out 25ft or so before starting...meaning a run out of the lake to finish. I was in line with another participant for the last .4mi or so and we both popped up at the same time to start running into the beach. He totally kicked my butt...I just wasn't comfortable running with all the rocks and things in the water. Either way, it was a lot of fun and we both got a chuckle out of the finish.
It's all Good even if I was outsprinted out of the water! Need to work on lake exits!
The age groupers (kids race) started just after I finished so it was fun to watch them all start. Those kids can swim like fish! We watched for a little while and then headed up to the restrooms to change into dry clothes. I think my finish time was around 44 minutes for 1.2 miles which I'm really happy with. I was doing the race for exercise and didn't really realize that it was a race until that morning.
Happy 4th of July! What better way to start the day than an open water lake swim. Jeff and Deb Spencer hosted the Arkansas Masters and friends for their Annual Firecracker Open Water Swim. The swim has two distance options...long and longer! The race was billed as a 5K or 2.5K but during the safety briefing they said that the distance was actually 3.6 miles and 1.8 miles.
Heading to the dock with swim buoys.
The group had about 25 people swimming including lots of kids. You can tell that I did not grow up as a swimmer because I was so shocked that these kids were going to do the full 5k+ swim. There were probably 6-7 of us just swimming the half distance. The full course option was an out and back to a small island in the main channel of the lake. We were all suited up with our own personal swim buoy attached at the ankle. This was to help the safety boats keep track of us but also to help since this area of the lake wasn't actually closed to boat traffic. We started at 7AM which helped since there wasn't a ton of boat traffic out that early.
Destination: that little tiny island a mere 1.8 miles away!
We began from a boat dock by the Spencer's cabin. It didn't take too long before I was settled into an easy pace. I stayed calm and didn't have that initial panic that I normally get during open water swims. It probably helped to not walk in from the shore because I had no clue on the water depth. The water was much clearer in this area of the lake so that was a welcome change.
After maybe 20 minutes or so, Jeff Spencer came up by Jet ski and asked me to try heading more towards the right of the island. It was like I had an internal compass that only wanted to go to the left of the destination! No matter what I did I kept drifting towards the far left of the main group. I was lucky to have a kayaker near me at all times which really helped me feel safe since this was my first lake swim of this type of distance.
The water wasn't too bad...temperature was great and there was very little chop. My only problem was that the island destination was like an Oasis mirage...it just never seemed to get any closer. There were even a few moments where it seemed like I wasn't even moving forward in the water. I was so relieved to finally finish and even though I wasn't overwhelmingly tired I don't think I would have wanted to do the return trip. I got into the return boat and was surprised that we didn't head immediately back. That's because there were still a few people swimming...which means I WASN'T LAST!!!
My time for the 1.8 miles was approx. 1 hour 4 min. My previous longest non-stop swim was at the One Hour Postal Swim in January where I swam about 2950yd in the 1 hour. This was a great confidence builder for me around open water swimming. I owe my friends a lot of thanks because they reassured me and encouraged me to give it a try.
Our outdoor pool has long course lap swimming hours Monday - Friday from 5:30-6:30AM or 11AM - 12:30 PM. Not being a morning person, I haven't made it to the pool at all this week for the early AM workouts. I took today off and decided to hit the pool for the lunch time laps.
I only knew a couple of the other masters swimmers today and everyone seemed to be doing their own workouts. I did my standard warm-up of 300m and 200m of drills. On long course, that doesn't seem like enough of drills, but oh well! I still need to order a kick board so I only did 50m of kick. I decided to do 8 x 100m for my main set. My first 3 were going well but I took a little break to do an easy 100 of back/breast. (Needed to switch over to my back more...got horribly burnt last week swimming at lunch.)
I got back into my 100 free and then another girl joined my lane to swim. That sort of threw me off and I just never could settle back into my workout. I ended up with 5 x 100m and some additional laps of just messing around with drills and things. I lost track so I don't know my official total but I suspect it was around 1500-1700m. Not bad for a lunchtime workout.
After the pool, I headed to the groomers to pick up Hershey. She was there getting another shave down. With this heat, her long hair gets very hot. The groomers had her all dolled up for 4th of July! Pretty cute, huh? She usually gets the bows out by the end of the day, but the bandanna should last for a week or so.
