I couldn't gauge much from today's video of a 25 at the end of practice except one major thing: boy was my dive start UGLY! (Photo by Jay King)
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My coach, Jeff King, joked with me this morning about how long it took me to get a post up yesterday. So hopefully this isn’t too bad for him — after all, Jeff, we have to keep our news stories up for a while, too!
This morning’s practice continued to push me in new ways and the biggest continues to be keeping up with the intervals. I think this is the biggest challenge because while my body had somewhat started to catch up with the swim workouts strength-wise (at least enough for me to get through them) I haven’t yet caught up in the cardiovascular area.
And that’s exactly how we’re being challenged in practice. Faster intervals (for me, at least), breath control, etc. And of course the kicking. How could I forget about kicking, especially since I’m way slower than everyone else.
Today I had the pleasure of finishing in front of the group during the end of our warm-up kick set thanks to the help of fins. As did Pat Sullivan, my partner in slow kicking who became my partner in crushing everyone because we put fins on and they didn’t. This, of course, led to Jeff serenading me with: “Leader of the Pack.” And I couldn’t name the group who sang the song.
But before anyone goes accusing me of making things easier by putting fins on let me first say that I didn’t have them on the whole time and let me also say that just because they are on and help me go forward way faster doesn’t mean I’m not kicking just as hard, and pushing double the amount of water with all that surface area. The legs were still burning— trust me.
After our sets of four 100 kicks done on intervals mixed with four 25s on zero breaths — aka warm up — it was time to get into the real workout. Also, I think I just forgot a part of the warm up. I think we started with swim … maybe a few 100s? Ten of ‘em I think? Someone out there comment and remind me … I remember diving in at the start of practice, so it was some kind of swim.
Besides my obviously failing memory — probably a side effect of the 4:30 practices/3:40 wake up call and my inability to use my brain at that point in time — practice went okay.
After all the kicking we did some more swim work — this time sets of 50s. I think the set broke down as five 50s four times, on intervals depending on which group you were in. I, of course, was in the slow group. Which meant intervals of 45 seconds, 1:05, 40 secs, 1:15, 2:00 (warm down), twice. Then 45, 55, 40, 1:05, 2:00, twice.
And you know you’re really slow when the high school girls next to you, probably a good seven to eight years younger than you, are talking about how much they enjoy the set because it’s not too challenging … and you’re in the lane next to them tired, breathing hard and trying to pretend you’re fine. Oh, and not making the intervals they think are super easy.
It’s a real boost to the ego, let me tell ya.
I finished with a 25 swim with a video I can break down and analyze. Though, Jeff, I gotta tell you we might have to re-shoot it cause it’s tough to see everything.
The first thing I noticed was my legs were not together on the dive. Doh. As a matter of fact, it was one of two things I did wrong on the ugly start. I also didn’t kick my legs up so the entry was really ugly. I kinda, sorta flopped in. Not really, but it didn’t look graceful.
I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping my head down, and I only took one breath on the lap.
I don’t know though, again the distance from the camera wasn’t great. I couldn’t get a good idea of the stroke, though it didn’t look like I was crossing too much. It did kinda seem that my arms were heavy, making too much of a splash when they went in the water.
I’ll see what Jeff has to say about the swim tomorrow. Oh, and Jeff: the answer is the Shangri Las.
Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.
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