The best picture I could find of the 'Jeff King Smile,' when he knows he's got a butt-kicking set. We'll keep looking, but it's tough to catch. (Photo by Paul Tenorio/The Washington Post)
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After swimming for distance the past two days, I was relieved when my coach, Jeff King, told me that today’s practice was going to involve lots of sprints…25-yard sprints.
That put a smile on my face. Much more “up my alley,” than those darn 500s and 400s and 1,000,000s. Okay, maybe not 1,000,000s.
I went into today’s practice focused on just ripping out these sprints and feeling fast again. I think the biggest challenge of the distance workouts I’ve done over the past few days has been overcoming the mental battle of just feeling…how do I put this…I guess feeling insufficient. I just couldn’t shake the idea that I was not good at the workouts. Thus, going up and down the pool became just as much a battle of not thinking about how bad I was doing as it was about pushing my body when it was tired. Trust me, it gets harder when you’re having to overcome mental barriers, too.
The thing is, I know Jeff doesn’t look at the past workouts the way I do. I mean, he knows they aren’t in my wheelhouse, but he also sees a ton of positives out of doing them and he probably tries to look at the workouts from the side of how hard I’m working in them — though I know his focus is on getting me to cut out some of my bad habits that I just can’t seem to shake.
Anyway, I just wanted to feel fast again and that is what this gave me an opportunity to do.
The set broke down like this:
Seven 100 IMs consecutively (warm-up)
200 swim
200 kick
Two 25s sprint
175 swim
175 kick
Three 25s sprint
150, 150, four
125, 125, five…etc., etc.
There was still a decent amount of swimming to do, but not nearly the amount we had been doing in the past couple days. Thus Jeff emphasized this morning before we hopped in the pool that even though it was shorter distance it didn’t mean that we weren’t going as hard. This was going to be all about effort. Basically: You get out of it what you put in.
And so I worked hard.
The biggest challenge for me was trying to figure out how much rest was too much and at what kind of pace this workout was supposed to be done. Tucker was swimming with me and I couldn’t quite figure out his routine as far as when he was/was not ready to go.
I think we all have our own quirks in the pool when we get a break — no matter how long that rest is.
For example: If I have at least 15 seconds of rest, when I get to the wall I’ll pop my goggles off and onto my forehead just because. Then, with about four seconds left in the rest I throw them back on and get going. I think I was pretty good about reading some people’s rhythms, but I’m also usually not the pace-setter in the workouts.
Today I was. And Tucker never seemed to put his goggles back on until I had already pushed off. It threw me. Anyway, we did a pretty good job and I felt very strong throughout the whole sprint set. I just like doing them and I think it did re-establish that whole confidence thing.
After the workout I communicated to Jeff how much I enjoyed the workout.
“Of course,” he said. “I hope you did. Because you’re not going to be doing it again for a long, long time.”
Oh joy!
Of course, I knew this…what did you expect? I think Jeff just loved saying it too, because I got the signature Jeff King Smile after that line. Oh well, at least I got one practice full of 25s…I’ll soak it in until the next one.
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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