Being an old worn out swimmer who came from an age group program of pretty high mileage training - even for a sprint/middle distance stroke person - I prefer to keep all my training sessions in the 3k range these days. Any longer and I get bored and start to lose concentration.
Last night I had 4k on th eplan. Yuck. 4k of nothing but freestyle. Double yuck. ANd the pool was going to be LCM. Triple yuck! Well, things started looking up when I arrived and the pool was SCY - yeah! at least 4k SCY is less than 4k LCM! I don't like to be in the pool for more than 60min, so I knew there would be no dilly-dallying on the warmup. Which is a bit difficult for me, as I like to take advantage of all warm up yards and swim nice and slow until my arms start to come around. And last night I had 1000 yards of various warmup, so lots of time to stretch out, but then get down to business and get 'er done! Nairy a swim goes by that I don't have an issue with someone swimmig close to me. Last night was no exception. I had my own lane (not hard when we had 20+ to choose from, it was a Friday night in a college town, and the night before graduation - who was going to be at the pool at 5:30!) But of course the girl who got in the lane next to me had to kick, with fins, feet coming out of the water, smacking down, making tidal waves lapping over the line into my lane. As annoyed as I was, I decided not to move lanes and look at as good tri practice. The first 500 at half IM pace was nice and easy, and my attitude improved. Had it felt like crap, the attitude would have needed some serious adjusting. So, I kept plugging away. Lap after lap of freestyle, turn after turn, dolphin kick after dolphin kick off the wall, the pattern continued. The only thing to change was the pace on various repeats, and an occasional pull instead of swim. The last few hundred yards, my arms were tiring, I just wanted to be out of the pool, and then I was! 58 minutes! I made it under the hour.
Some of my pool observations:
1) any time I have a person swimming next to me who is not swimming quietly (ie, making too much splahs or waves) I want to stop them and tell them that's not faster!
2) whenever the pool is SCY and was supposed to be LCM, I need to buy the lifeguards beer (they are college kids after all)
3) it drives me crazy that I can't see any of the pace clocks at my pool when I come off the turns. I only see the time at the end of an interval. It makes me crazy. In SCY, we swim across the pool, and the clocks are these nice easy to see digital clocks (when I'm at the wall), but they are on the wall behind the pool, not to the side, so I can't see them when I breathe off the wall. LCM they are just too far awy, and my 40+ year old eyes just can't focus on them fast enough to see them. I think if they were analog clocks, I could see them and generally know where the second hand is, but the digital is too hard to read when my head is only turned for a second. All the pools I swam in as a kid had clocks that I could see off every turn. That's how I paced, and how I kept count when I swam more than 100 repeats.
4) You see, I have trouble counting over 100 yards. Becaue I have this compulsive need, no, its not even a need, it just happens. I count every stroke, all the time. My brain just can't disengage and not count.So if I have to do a 200 or more, the counting of strokes and counting laps require a lot of discipline. Then throw in an occasional set where I have to do a breathing pattern that is not my normal breathe every 3, and my brain is on overload. Counting strokes per lap , counting laps, and counting strokes between breaths. It sends my brain into overdrive.
Despite all my bitching about the pool policies where I swim (there are a lot of stupid policies), and the people I have to share lanes with (there are a lot of annoying people I have to share lanes with - I'm sure they are not annoying people, they are just annoying swimmers), considering I don't train with a masters team and have the luck of the draw at open lap swim, I am lucky to have such great facilities, and I should not complain. And I will try not to complain too much. And if those water joggers would stay away from me, and the water aerobics people would turn down their music and microphones, and heck, if I could just have my own private lane whenever I am at the pool, and if we could keep my swim workouts to 3k or less (teeheehee), then I might have more love and less hate for swimming.
1 comment:
Time for a pool at your house? A friend had a lap pool and loved it. But then you wouldn't get to see the college-aged life guards (which could be a good thing).
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