Channeling My Inner Fish*

*Note that I am not channeling my inner mermaid because all the pictures that came up on Google involved copious amounts of bare boobies, and apparently I don’t need to work any harder at making my readers associate me with boobies based on D’s comment on my August 16th post.

So anyway, today was my first big workout of my first week of my first big build cycle towards Ironman Arizona, and the goal was to go long at masters swim…work the whole 90 minutes…get in the pool the minute it opens (which I always do) and stay to the very end. We all know swimming is a bit of a challenge for me – 2.5 years ago, I couldn’t put my face in the water; 1 year ago, I was still wearing a nose clip – so I still have to psyche myself up a bit when it comes to distance swimming.

As usual, I was the first one in the locker room, the first one on the deck, and the first one in the pool the minute the lifeguard came out.

Swim, swim, swim goes the warmup 15 minutes. Time for the 30-30-20s (4 x 25 on the :30, :30, :20 for a total of 300 yds) and my lanemates are still arriving, not warmed up, just keep swimming while they chat. More and more sets up and down the pool, some free, some non-free…a respite of something different with some kicking (OW that feels just great a day after the ART doc jammed his thumb into the back of my knee with intent to injure…) and then my favorite – long sets with some pulling.

I started with 1 person in the lane (me), we hit a peak of 4 people, and as I headed off down the lane with 5 x 200 more to go I was back to being by myself.

A quick peek while pushing off the wall showed less and less swimmers in the fast lanes, till – finally – I was the last masters swimmer left out there. A few lap swimmers filled in the gaps and they all seemed to be doing some variety of dead-man’s float, which made me feel especially fast when I whooshed by with paddles and a pull buoy.

Finally FINALLY, I was done. 3,550 yards, my longest swim ever by 400 yards (and I can count how many times I have exceeded 3,000 yards on one hand). I cracked 2 miles! It wasn’t especially fast but it was a milestone for me, especially since I’ll be doing 2 miles in open water this weekend and a 2.4 mile OW swim race in 2 weeks!