3200 (40450/249300)

200 swim (warmup)
200 kick/drill by 50 (warmup)
400 pull, negative split
8 x 25 choice on :45, 3rd and 6th fast (1-4 free, 5-8 back)
800 swim (15:18)
200 pull smooth
400 swim
4 x 50 kick/drill (reverse IM)
200 swim fast
100 easy (warmdown)

Total: 2900 SCM (~3200 SCY)

We randomly ended up doing an 800 at this practice, so I got to compare it to the time I got the day before. Happily, I was faster the second time. :) I still think I can probably up my pace at the beginning of these distance sets. I'm not getting as tired as I expect, and I could probably improve my time a lot by being less cautious.

I've also been trying lately to do more different kinds of kicking in kick sets, hence the reverse IM in that kick/drill set. I am not so good at the fly kick, and I really need to practice, as much as it kills me. My biggest problem is breathing, since I need to do it, but my fly kick sucks on the surface of the water. It's a lot better if I get my whole head under the water, but then I have a lot harder time keeping up the kick for any real distance.

3000 (37250/246100)

500 pull with paddles (flip turns)
2 x 50 free (flip turns)
100 free (flip turns)
1600 free (800m 16:50 / 1000m 22:05 / 1600m 33:39)
200 kick, reverse IM
2 x 100 IM (second timed at 2:08)
50 fly (1:03)
250 pull (flip turns)

Total: 3000 SCM (3300 SCY)

This was a random weekend swim I decided to do so I could see what my distance times are looking like. I just signed up to do the Race for the Oceans and that's a 1K, but I wasn't sure I've ever swam a 1K without pulling before.

My 1K time wasn't too bad. I ended up gaining about :30 per 500 on top of my normal 100 meter splits (right around 2:00). The time I got on the 1K would make my 50s average at about 1:05, which isn't too terrible, considering I was really holding back at the beginning because I don't know how tired I'll get.

The 1:03 on the 50m fly was shocking. My second 25 was dragging HARD, so I must have been quick on the first half. My two handed open turn is a train wreck, too.

Also, I've been trying to work on my flipturns when I swim on my own. I'm still really bad at them, and I get a lot of water up my nose, but maybe someday I'll actually get to a point where I can do those by default, instead of open turns. Here's hoping, anyway.

3000 / 3500 (34250/243100)

Thursday, June 25 - Masters Practice

200 swim (warmup)
200 drill (warmup)
4 x 100, odds kick/swim, evens swim/kick (with fins)
4 x 50, build 1-3, 4 easy on 1:10
6 x 100 fast for time (1:36, 1:46, 1:48, 1:49, 1:52, 1:48)
4 x 150 pull, breathe every 9 on the last 50
100, 50 breast / 50 back
6 x 50 fast for time (:56, :56, :51, :52, :55, :54)
4 x 50 pull on 1:30 (warmdown)

Total: 2800 LCM (~3000 SCY)

My times on my 100s and 50s seem really slow, even for meters. I must have been tired that day, or something. I can usually sprint a 50 a lot quicker LC than SC because my turns are so bad. My SCY times are usually around :45 on a sprint, so maybe it's not TOO bad, but who knows.

One thing I'm really going to miss without LC is being pushed by people who are usually in lane 2. We weren't having as much distance cut as usual because of the different skill levels in the lane, and it felt nice to try and keep up and sometimes succeed.

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Friday, June 26 - Masters Practice

300 swim (warmup)
200 drill (warmup)
100 kick (warmup)
4 x 50, 25 kick / 25 swim
500 pull
4 x 100, 25 fingertip drag / 25 head up / 25 fingertip drag / 25 swim
4 x 75 IM (removing least favorite stroke, so fly/back/free)
50 easy/fast
50 fast/easy
50 build
50 fast
400 pull, breathe every 5, choice by 50 (with paddles)
4 x 100, 25 right arm / 25 left arm / 25 head up / 25 swim
8 x 25 (2 x V sprints)

Total: 3200 SCM (3500 SCY)

I loved these 75 IMs. I'm so bad at breaststroke, and I love fly so much, I was thrilled to get to skip the breast part of the IM. The funny part about my lane is that we all skipped different strokes, and the only person who skipped fly was Lori, and that's because she's never learned to do it. :) Amanda doesn't like her freestyle at the moment (she's about seven months pregnant) and Vicki hates backstroke.

Then there's the head up drill. I HATE that drill. At one point Evan shouted at me to kick hard during it, and I announced my hatred of it. The bonus of having your head out of the water. :p Then Reu shouted at me, "Come on, little triathlete!" Yeah, I know, I need the practice. Stupid drill.

3000 (27750/236600)

This workout kicked my butt. So much IM. And I refused to stop doing fly in mine, even though everyone else in my lane started subbing in some freestyle instead. I want to be a butterflyer, dammit. Even as unreasonable as it probably is. I love that stupid stroke. It just doesn't love me very much, heh.

200 swim (warmup)
200 drill (warmup)
25 fly
50 back
75 breast
100 free
100 fly kick
75 back kick
50 breast kick
25 free kick
100 IM
200, 100 free, 100 breast
300, 200 free, 100 IM
400, 300 free, 100 back
300, 200 free, 100 IM
200, 100 free, 100 breast
100 IM
2 x { 25 free / 25 free drill / 25 stroke / 25 stroke drill }
50 free (warmdown)

Total: 2750 SCM (~3000 SCY)

3300 (24750/233600)

We ended up getting long course this Friday as well because there was a long course meet over the weekend, which made me pretty happy. Have I mentioned that I love long course? Because BOY, do I.

I've recently taken to doing almost all of my pulling with paddles. I like what it does to my stroke, and the extra work it makes my sad little triceps do. However this particular day I was getting my ass kicked by everyone in the lane, so maybe I should have gone without, ha.

200 swim (warmup)
200 kick (warmup)
8 x 50 kick, odds free, evens fly on 1:10
2 x 400 pull (with paddles) on 7:30-ish
3 x 100 free on 2:00, 1:55, 1:00
4 x 50 free on 1:10, 1:05, 1:00, :55
300 pull (with paddles)
3 x 100 free on 2:00, 1:55, 1:00
4 x 50 free on 1:10, 1:05, 1:00, :55
100, 50 breast, 50 back (warmdown)

Total: 3000 LCM (~3300 LCY)

1500 / 3300 (21450/230300)

So the first workout here was from Wednesday, June 17. I hadn't swam since the previous Friday, and after watching a TON of live swimming at the Grand Prix, I was starting to go crazy, I wanted to swim so badly. So I took 45 minutes and went to the smaller of the two muni pools in my area. There are so few lanes in that pool to begin with, and the Vortex age group swim team was having practice, so I had to share a lane the whole way, half of the time with a guy who was just doing distance freestyle (who had one half of the lane), and half of the time with three people (another guy came along and I offered to share my half of the lane with him in a screwed up circle swim because the other guy didn't stop for us to get his attention and have him circle swim as well).

It made swimming fly interesting, but I had been wanting to swim some butterfly for so long that I made it work by doing some one-arm fly when needed.

The second workout was from Thursday's long course Masters practice. I don't have much comments about that, except that I LOVE long course, and I'm sad we don't get to do it again until next summer. *cries*

500 free (open turns)
200 free (flip turns)
300 pull with paddles (drill)
2 x 100 breast
50 fly
100 IM
50 free
100 pull

Total: 1500 yards

--

300 swim (warmup)
100 drill (warmup)

200 pull
200 fast
150 drill (6 kick hesitation/catchup/zipper)
100 stroke (breast)
50 fast

200 pull
150 drill (6 kick hesitation/catchup/zipper)
150 fast
100 stroke (back)
50 fast
50 streamline kick

200 pull
150 drill (6 kick hesitation/catchup/zipper)
100 stroke (free)
100 fast
50 fast

200 pull
150 drill (6 kick hesitation/catchup/zipper)
100 stroke (breast)
50 fast
50 fast
50 streamline kick

Total: 3000 LCM (~3300 LCY)

2250 (16950/225800)

This is the second workout I had with the SCSC in NorCal. This one was at a local high school called Harker, I believe, same coach as Thursday morning. I'd originally planned to swim with them a third time on Monday morning before I left to come home, but Alix and I decided that staying up late and drinking rum the night before sounded more fun, hee.

100 free (warmup)

3 x 100 pull, drill/swim by 25

3 x 100 pull, DPS/swim by 25

2 x { 25 underwater dolphin kick /25 free / 25 back kick }

3 x 100, 25 back kick / 25 back / 25 breast kick / 25 breast

250, 50 free / 50 fly / 100 free / 50 breast

250, 50 free / 50 back / 100 free / 50 back

150 free

2 x 50 free, sprint

50 breast sprint

100 free (warmdown)

Total: 2050 SCM (2250 SCY)

Honestly, I really loved the sprints at the end of this workout, because they were relay races. I had one guy in my lane with me, and the coach separated out everyone so there were two people per lane. The first relay was 200 free, so we each had to alternate fifties. He asked me to start, so I swam the first and third 50s. I'm proud to say that, despite my partner being quite a bit slower than most of the people in the group, my lane got first. :) I swam my brains out, so I was glad to bring us out on top.

The second sprint was 50 back, then 50 breast. My lanemate said he was awful at breaststroke, and even though I am as well (seriously), I offered to swim it. Needless to say we got our rearends kicked, but it was a heck of a lot of fun attempting to sprint breaststroke. Let's just say I don't think I'll ever be doing that in competition, heh.

2100 (14700/223550)

Masters Practice, Santa Clara Edition

So this post is a little special because I headed to Northern California on June 10th to spend some time with my good friend Alix. The big plan for the weekend was to go see the Santa Clara Grand Prix, which was the sixth and last meet in 2009's Grand Prix series swim meets. Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens, Scott Spann, Nathan Adrian, Matt Grevers, Dave Walters, Stephanie Rice, Dagny Knutson, Mary Descenza, Lacey Nymeyer, Kirsty Coventry, and tons of other elite swimmers were competing, a lot of them getting ready for World Championship Trials.

Anyway, Alix swims Masters with the Santa Clara Swim Club, and they happen to practice part of the season at the pool where the meet was taking place. It worked out that the first day I was in town was the last day at the International pool, so despite having VERY little sleep (my flight out of Denver was massively delayed and I didn't get into SJC until 12:30, and not into bed until almost two AM), we got up and went to practice, where I got to swim with their Group 2 Masters in the competition pool (pictured above; photo taken right after I'd finished practice).

I'm probably just a spaz, but it was cool getting to swim in the same water that the people I mentioned up there would be swimming in the next day. Hee.

Anyway, the Group 2 coach was AWESOME and pointed out two things that were wrong with my freestyle stroke that I had NO idea I was doing wrong. Let's just say that now all the high elbow drills and the catchup drill make WAY more sense now. Hah. The workout was only 60 minutes, and shorter than I'm used to, but it was so fun swimming outside (we don't do that much in Colorado) and I was spending so much time fixing my stroke that it didn't matter ultimately. :) The set is below.

100 free (warmup)

100 breast (warmup)

2 x { 2 x 100 pull with paddles, 25 catchup / 25 swim / 25 catchup / 25 swim // 100 build by 25 }

3 x 100 pull, 50 back / 50 free

50 fly / 50 free

50 breast / 100 free

50 back / 150 free

50 back / 50 free

50 breast / 100 free

50 back / 150 free

100 free (warmdown)

Total: 1900 LCM (~2100 LCY)

2750 (12600/221450)

And now I post a billion swim workouts. I felt weird about posting them when I hadn't finished my triathlon post, so I typed them all up and then didn't post them. Heh. Anyway, please excuse the clutter as I go back and enter all of these things. At least I don't remember much about them, so there will be very little commentary!

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300 swim (warmup)
10 x 50, odds kick, evens swim, build 1-5 on 1:30
4 x 100, 25 12 kick hesitation / 25 10 kick hesitation / 25 8 kick hesitation / 25 6 kick hesitation on 3:00
3 x 100, 25 left arm / 25 right arm / 25 fist / 25 swim on 3:00
4 x 100, 2 x 25 zipper / 25 fingertip drag on 2:15
4 x 100 Victory sprints on 2:15
200 pull (warmdown)

Total: 2500 SCM (~2750 SCY)

550 (9850/218700) aka Tri Take Two

Pre-race thumbs up. Click the picture to see my Facebook gallery. :)

Okay, so this is very, VERY late, but life has been interesting and I haven't been able to type this up until now.

I have to say, I was MUCH more relaxed before this tri than I was the first one, even though the swimming part still scared me a little. I figured there was no way it could be worse than the first time I did it, especially since the swim part was 300 less meters, and the bike (which I was massively confident about) was longer. My goal for this tri was to be faster than 18 MPH average on the bike part.

The day before the tri, Kimberley got a hold of me and invited me to carpool to Boulder with some girls from her Tri group, and I agreed. This pushed my wake up time back to 4:15 AM. I forewent the prerace shower and just had some breakfast (yogurt with raspberries and cereal) and ran out the door to drive to the home of a gal named Shaudin. She and her husband are the owner of a giantic van and a four-bike trailer hitch bikerack, so she volunteered to drive herself, her nextdoor neighbor Margaret, Kimberley and myself to Boulder. We stopped on the way to meet up with another carful of triathletes (and have some Starbucks), and then we were off.

We got to the reservoir a little early, but that gave us ample time to unpack the van, get setup in the transition area, get marked, and empty our bladders before getting into our wetsuits. I got a different suit this time by Blueseventy, but I'm not sure I liked it. The neck was pretty tight, and it made my arteries bulge out all scary-like. One of these days (hopefully soon) I'd like to just own a wetsuit. In the long run it's going to save me money, make it easier to do training swims, and keep me from having to run across town to reserver/pickup/dropoff a wetsuit.

I was in the second swimwave (pink caps this time), which ended up with a ten minute delayed start (they sent men under thirty, then men over thirty before us). It was really sunny at the reservoir, which excited and worried me at the same time. I was glad that the sun made it all feel way less ominous to me than the Windsor swim, but the reflection off the water was pretty bad, even with my tinted goggles. Once we were swimming, though, spotting the buoys wasn't too hard.

This swim cource was basically just two 90º right hand turns, like a big square out into the reservoir. I got all the way past the last buoy before I needed a break and took a few seconds on my back to calm my breathing down. I was a little nervous going in, but not scared at all once I was out in the middle of the water. I think my problem at this point is that I'm still swimming too hard. Someone told me (belatedly) that they hardly ever kick until the end, whereas I kick pretty strong the whole way.

Climbing out of the water was way easier this time around too, beacuse the beach is sand and just a gentle slope, rather than the hard shore at Windsor Lake. As I was running to the swim exit arch, I heard them announcing the names of everyone crossing the line as the top ten swimmers in our heat. I was literally in shock when I heard them say my name, the tenth person to finish! Turns out I did the 500 meters in 8:23, which puts my 100 meter pace at around 1:40. I'm still surprised I could go that fast! Goes to show what adrenaline can do for you. :)

However all that kicking bit me in the ass when I got back to the transition area and I got a massive Charlie horse in my left calf, which made getting my wetsuit off and bike shoes on interesting. It also made my T1 time longer than I wanted at 4:36.

But then I was off on my bike, the part of the race I was most excited about. I felt great about my swim, and started flying on my bike, until I started hearing a strange noise, and noticed that my front tire had gone completely flat. At this point I hadn't even made it five of the 17 miles. I found a safe-ish place to pull off and started getting my front tire off, which proved to be a pain as I hadn't done it before on that tire. I pulled out my spare tube and got it installed and aired up, then finally I was back on my way after losing probably between 10 and 15 minutes replacing the tube.

Then things started getting strange again, and a survey of my tires showed that my REAR tire was now losing air. I had no more tubes, so I jumped off and aired it up, glad to see it was at least holding air. The air in the back tire lasted about 2-3 miles tops, so I kept having to get off and repump my tire with my hand pump. One nice lady stopped along the way and gave me a CO2 cartidge filler that made the refilling easier, but it only lasted that one refill and it was back to the hand pump after that. I tried to pull off every time I passed a checkpoint with police or volunteers posted, so I could avoid getting killed by the highway traffic.

Finally, one hour, twenty-four minutes, and thirty-six seconds after I'd started the bike ride I made it back to the transition area. At that point I was just proud that I'd managed to finish, though I was disappointed in the time it took, as I'd been hoping for something closer to fifty minutes.

But there is a lesson learned here. Back when I first planned to do triathlons, my friend Shirley said that I shouldn't even necessarily bet on finishing my first race, because something could happen and I could get two flat tires on my bike. At the time, I thought there was no way that someone could be that unlucky. Obviously I know better. Next time I'll have at least two spare tubes with me, and different expectations.

By the way, I wasn't even the only person in the race that had this happen. The gal who actually won as highest fundraiser had two flat tires as well, and she had to finish with one or both completely FLAT. Also, I'd originally thought that my back tire problems were due to the patch I already had on that tube leaking, but it turned out to be a completely separate puncture. I'm just lucky that way, I guess. :)

At that point I was exhauasted, hot, filthy from bike grease and road dirt, and the last thing I wanted was to run 3.2 miles. But after my second transition (1:21, not bad!), I was off on the 5K run. For some reason, this 5K was WAY harder than the last three I'd done. I'm not sure if it was beacuse of the heat (every other 5K I'd done before this had been in overcast, cool weather) or because, as I discovered later, I'd completely forgotten to take my maintenance asthma medication AND my allergy pill in my hurry to get out of the house on time. I felt like I was sucking wind the entire run, and even had to fast-walk some parts of it, because my lungs were aching. Even with the walking, I managed to finish the run in 31:53, which was only 90 seconds slower than my last tri with my pace only being 43 seconds slower at 10:31. My final time for the race was 2:10:48.

I keep thinking that, if I'd been able to keep my bike pace up like I'd wanted, my final would have been closer to 1:35, but really, the bike problems were part of it. Sometimes things don't cooperate, and getting through them and finishing was a success for me, even if I didn't get the time I wanted. I really enjoyed the race despite the issues, and I can't wait to do another one. In fact, there is a similar sprint in September on the same course and I'm about 99% I'm going to do it, just because I loved the first one so much.

I wasn't even the last person on the team to cross the finish line, which made me feel a little better. Though later on I found out that Margaret had been in a bike accident and hurt her leg a little (she managed to accidentally hit a dead deer on the course, trying to avoid some other cyclists - scary!). But there was lunch and beer awaiting us, and I partook in both. The beer was really good, and I had one of the best brownies ever in my sack lunch. :)

Kimberley and I tried to get well deserved massages as well, but the line was long enough that we never managed to get them before we had to leave. We headed back to Fort Collins in Shaudin's awesome van where we parted ways with hugs.

Like I said, this triathlon was so fun that it didn't matter how many things went wrong. I enjoyed it so much that I wish I could have the chance to do it over again without the bike failure. Maybe in September I'll have a different story.

Thank you to Rob, by the way, who asked about how things went WEEKS ago. Sorry for the delay in posting this. :)

3000 (9300/218150)

200 swim (warmup)
200 kick (warmup)
4 x { 3 x 50 free, first easy, second moderate, third sprint, all on 1:00 }
24 x 25 spins (freestyle sprint with fins) on :35
200 free easy
3 x 100 free, 1 and 2 sprint, 3 easy on 2:00
6 x 50 free, sprint down, easy back on 1:10
10 x 25 free, all sprint except 4 and 8, :05 rest
150 pull (warmdown)

Total: 2800 SCM (~3000 SCY)

Lately I haven't been having time to write these until right before I leave work for the night, and I just want to go home now, so I'm going to keep it short.

Evan was gone for a swim meet (coaching), so Reu coached today. I like it when he coaches, because he spends extra time with us slow kids to teach us technique. Today he pointed out that I'm not finishing my pull all the way before I pull my arm up for a stroke on freestyle, so I fixed it and wow, what a difference. It definitely helped my speed and strength, though it did make my triceps hurt a little. My wrists are sore now too, which might be part of it as well.

Lots of sprinting. Reu said he felt bad about it when I told him I was doing a tri tomorrow, heh.

We were really short today, possibly because a lot of masters are swim parents and the kids' meet is out of town this weekend, but also maybe because of practice yesterday morning. Either way, there were so few people that the slow lane got two lanes for four of us, so we each got to split and run to sets together, which was a lot of fun. All of us (me, Vicki, Lori, and Amanda) pace really close to each other that way. It's kinda neat. :)

Okay, I'm outta here. Gotta go get my wetsuit and then probably a beer. I have to try and go to bed early-ish tonight because I'm carpooling to Boulder and we're meeting at 5:00AM, which means I need to get up around 4:15. Good times.

Happy weekend, all.

3200 (6300/215150)

200 swim (warmup)
6 x 50 free
600, 150 free / 50 back
2 x 300 pull
50 fly
50 free
50 back
50 free
50 breast
50 free
6 x 50, odds kick, evens swim
6 x 100 free

Total: 2900 LCM (~3200 LCY)

Long Course Pool is Long

First day of long course meters. So far, I like it. At least for freestyle, anyway. Stroke at 50m per length is a little rough. My 50 fly was more like 35 fly, 15 free, heh. Still, it was fun to try it, and having ten or so people per lane wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Our lane was the slow-medium lane, and while I went second or third to last most of the morning, I only got lapped once (and that's because I got hung up a bit by the girl in front of me and ended up farther back than I'd started). The only issue was that we made the rather uninformed decision to start on the diving well end of the pool, all ten of us spent most of our between sets time clinging to the walls and the lane lines, where if we'd started on the other end, we could have just stood on the bottom.

All that said, it was harder than I expected it to be. Plus I had some lung and sinus issues, the former which might have been stamina related, or caused by the latter. The weather the last few days has been yo-yoing between rain and sun, so the barometric pressure changes have been wrecking havoc with the pressure in my head. I had a hard time sleeping last night because of those problems, and then during my pull sets today so much had built up that I felt like my brain was going to explode out the sides of my head.

I'm excited to do it again, though. Next week I have to miss Thursday and Friday practices, as well as the following Monday because I'm going to be in California to see the Santa Clara Grand Prix and hang out with my good friend Alix, woohoo! There are some tentitive plans to swim with her Master's group while I'm there, though, which I'm very excited about. Yay swimming!

Swimming is a Contact Sport

In other news, I managed to damage myself again, this time by smashing hands over the lane line with someone in the fast lane. It hurt pretty bad at the time, and I now have a pretty purple bruise that covers about half of my right index finger. When it comes out better, I think I'll have to snap a picture. Bruises from swimming. I am awesome.

3100 (3100/211950)

300 swim (warmup)
150 kick (warmup)
50 drill (warmup)
4 x 50, 25 kick / 25 swim
2 x 200 free on 4:15
2 x 200 free on 4:05
2 x 200 free on 3:55
3 x 50 free on :50
50 free on 1:30
3 x 50 free on 1:00
50 free on 1:30
3 x 50 back on 1:10
50 back on 1:30
8 x 25 kick, odds fast, evens easy
100 swim (warmdown)

Total: 2800 SCM (~3100 SCY)

This was the swim from yesterday morning, which was my 30th birthday. I had the day off, but I got up to swim anyway. Which is good, because I'm a massive failure as far as getting anything else done.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the swim. Thursday is the first day of LCM, so we'll see how that goes. I'm partially looking forward to it (I've never swam LCM before, should be interesting), and partially not (two lanes for the entire masters team, um, wee?). Training for the tri this weekend is massive fail, but I'm going to do it anyway. Even if it sucks and the weather is going to be horrible again.

I'm in a great mood right now. I'm sure you can all tell. Bleh.