3150 (49550)

200 swim (warmup)
100 backstroke kick (warmup)
2 x { 75 9-kick hesitation / 75 6-kick hesitation / 75 swim }
800 pull, breathe 3/5 by 50s
4 x 50 DPS on 1:15
800 free, build by 200
4 x 50 choice (back) on 1:20
200 pull (warmdown)
100 kick (warmdown)
100 backstroke kick (warmdown)

Total: 3150

Man, it's been a tough week for 5:00AM. Today my backup alarm (5:15) woke me up, and even though I rushed, I still left the house four minutes late, which put me at the pool four minutes late. I missed about 300 yards of warmup, but I did get 300, so it ended up being okay.

After warmup, Laurie got graduated to lane two because we had five people (Laurie, JD, Jim, myself, and Alex was back, finally) in lane one. She left before I got a chance to talk to her, so I don't know how she held up (they had about 800 more yards than us today, though I'm not sure if they finished that core set or not). I haven't seen Tom this week so far. I'm not sure if he's busy, or if he decided he'd had enough, heh. Jim's still sticking it out despite the fact that I can tell it's hard on him, especially the distance sets. It sounds dumb, but I'm proud of him for staying.

Alex lead most of the laps (because he's way the heck faster than me - he apparently used to play water polo in Brazil, and you can totally tell by his physique), and it worked pretty well. He did lap me on that second 800, but my goal on that one was just to finish without stopping, so I didn't mind. And I did finish it, and surprizingly felt really strong in my last 150. I thought I was going to die, so it was defintely a confidence booster to complete the set and to do it without feeling like I was going to expire.

I did squats and lunges yesterday and it hurts like holy hell to walk, stand up, use stairs, etc. Kicking, however, didn't bother me at all today. Win. I felt really good on all my sets today, actually. My backstroke is feeling really good now too, fast and symmetrical and actually less difficult than it used to. I was getting between :57 and 1:02 on those 50s, which isn't bad considering I still don't really do a turn on those. I need to work on that.

As far as DPS, I was getting right around 37-40 strokes per 50, which again, not too shabby. Joel McKenna says he got 38 on a 50 free the other day, and he's been swimming masters for five years (and has two top ten rankings in USMS events), so I don't feel bad about my stroke count. I really think my freestyle stroke is getting to be really efficient. I have a really smooth exchange, and I do a decent job of having high elbows when I do my pull. I think if I can get my kick to be a bit more active consistently, I could start getting a lot faster.

Finally, mostly for my reference: JD was telling me today about this crazy guy named Pavel Tsatsouline and his sort of radical stretching and strentgh techniques. He has a (horribly designed) website which I might attempt to check out later.