I’m now on a swimming every other week schedule. This has more to do with hair than with anything else. Long story, which I will write here later, I promise. Suffice it to say that I’m getting my swimming in the best possible time slot right now.

I’m still increasing my yardage by 100 every time I swim. I’m also timing my IMs with my cool triathlete watch. So here’s my stats for today.

Last time I swam, I swam 1000 yards, so today I planned to swim 1100. I started out like usual, swimming a 50 free. That usually exhausts me, and I follow it up with a 50 back, but today, I swam another 50 free after a brief rest. Then I swam 100 back, and 100 breast. This is usually the point where I do a ‘cool down’ stroke to catch my breath. Not today! I jumped right into the meat of my workout, my 100 IM. I timed myself and came in at 2:59.01. The last time I swam the IM, I came in at 2:57.77, so I was a little disappointed about the slowdown, but I was also swimming this intense 100 straight on the heels of a real stroke, rather than my usual elementary backstroke, so I was still feeling good.

I started to swim a full 100 elementary back stroke, when I found that I didn’t need that much recovery after swimming a 50. So I went right to what I call IM splits; I will swim half an IM, 25 fly, 25 back, and then swim 50 elementary back. After I finished swimming 25 breast, 25 free, and 50 elementary, I repeated my IM splits. By this point, I was in my 900 yard set. I decided to work on flip turns, so I swam 25 free, 25 back, 25 free, 25 back. My flip turns were horrible and embarrassing, though, and took enough out of me to encourage me to do a length of cool down, so I swam 50 elementary at this point.

Revived, I swam 50 breast following the 50 elementary back, and I finished my set with 25 free, 25 back, 25 free, 25 back, minus the flip turns. I’ll have to work on them next time. When I got home and calculated up what I swam, I came up with 1150! I had no idea I was overshooting the mark in my attempt to cut down on the cool down stroke. I was very pleased with the workout overall. I hope to build up my stamina to the point where I’m no longer swimming cool down laps. Next session, 1200!