Sunday, November 30, 2008

Finally a new training update!


This week I finally got back in the pool. It was really difficult at first, but now that I'm a few days in its really great to start working out again. Every winter I go into a slump with my training, last years was nearly 4 month long. This year I knew that after the marathon I was going to be psychologically wiped, but didn't think it would hit me this hard. I haven't really tried running yet, but I still don't think my foot is back to par, I really need to get it checked out. The beauty of triathlon is that I can simply keep putting that off and focus on biking and swimming and there isn't TOO much loss.

Back to the pool.

I went back to my first swim with the club on Tuesday, and let me tell you, it was HARD. I was in terrible shape. Instead of swimming I was simply sinking. I felt like that mouse in the photo holding to the wall for dear life. At the end of race season I was comfortably holding 1:30/100 meters in all of my sets. This week going back, I was struggling to hit 1:30's high and sometimes edged above 1:40. I was skipping sets and doing my own thing. Turns out 6 weeks out of the pool can really do a number on your fitness.

With embarrassment in mind, I went swimming Wednesday over lunch. I wanted to get a good strong workout in, but my arms were so dead from Tuesday that I just sneaked in 1000 meters and called it a day.

Thursday I braved practice again which was 21X100 main set broken up into different paces. The end being 6X100 @ 1:35. This should have been an easy set, but I was just sneaking in around 1:33 and not getting nearly enough rest in those 2 seconds that I would have to skip again.

The plus side to this is that even though it was only two days, Tuesday to Thursday there was a drastic difference in my fitness.

I went swimming again today and did a 2.5k workout, and was finally comfortably able to make my sets on 1:35. It always surprises me how quickly it will come back. Sure I'm still a long way off from where I was in the summer, but I can consider this my build phase for the coming season, get some good ground work in. My goal for next summer is to hit 1:25/100 meters open water over 2k, this is quite a bit faster than I'm at today but with some effort I think it can come.

Anyways, off to sleep, on that note I'm going swimming in the morning. Going to try and get as much fitness in before I get fat and lazy over the holidays when I'm back home with Mom cooking for me! I can't wait!

Take it easy

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good to see you're getting back into the pool. Just in time for Xmas to roll around too, it'll probably even things out.