Even though I would be swimming at the lake in the evening I still was going to get a good swim workout at lunch. The pool sessions are valuable. I decided to do an old standby swim routine of decreasing distance sets with increasing intensity. These are tough on me. During the 800 yard set, Jim joined me in the next lane. I’m just a little faster than Jim in the water and he would challenge me – especially the 100 yard set. He took off about 15 seconds before me and I tried to catch him – it was close but no cigar. With the warm up and cool down I logged 3500 yards in 1:02.
Progressively faster with 60 sec RI
1000 - 15:55 (1:35 / 100)
0800 - 12:27 (1:33 / 100)
0600 - 09:23 (1:33 / 100)
0400 - 06:12 (1:33 / 100)
0200 - 02:59 (1:29 / 100)
0100 - 01:24 (1:24 / 100)
I felt good after the lunch swim but I was not looking forward to the lake swim. The last two weeks the water has been so hot that I have really felt like I was being boiled alive. I think the swim the previous week actually hurt me a little bit – I just could not cool down from it – when we were finally out of the water it was a relief to stand in the 95 degree blazing sun. So, I approached this swim with some apprehension. I was also planning on running that horrible hilly road after the swim. That road proved to be a super tough brick on Saturday.
Luckily, the lake water was much cooler than it has been. There still has not been any rain and it definitely has not been much cooler – but the water temperature was comfortable. There were only five of us and we decided to head out past the third buoy. We guestimated this distance to be 500 yards. This was a relaxing easy swim for me and the first 500 took a little over 10 minutes. The way back 500 took a little under 10 minutes. Nice and easy – there was a little chop to the water and some swells from the boats but just good easy open water swim practice.
Jim was going to be riding his bike to the lake after work and running the hills with me at 6:00 PM. I got to talking with some friends and still no Jim. I was about to call it a day and I see a bike. Fortunately, it was not nearly as hot as it was on Saturday but this road is hard no matter what. We took off at a comfortable pace but my legs were tired. It actually seemed a little harder than it did on Saturday – I know that this is foolish – it was harder Saturday when it was hotter and after the 42 mile bike ride. But still – it felt hard. I was wearing my heart rate monitor this time and trying to keep my HR in my comfort zone. That was hard on the uphills. My heart rate crept up as the run went on – but Jim and I finished this run a little faster than I did it on Saturday and we finished with even splits. The 6 miles were covered in 51:38 with an average pace of 8:37 minutes / mile (Saturday was 8:50 minutes / mile).
Looking at the calendar – half the year is over. I had made some rather generic mileage goals at the start of the year and I thought I would check in on my progress. I wanted 300,000 yards swimming, 5000 miles biking and 1200 miles running. Looks like I am right on schedule but I am sure that my volume will drop off after Louisville.
2009 totals
Bike:-----139h 51m 34s - 2544.06 Mi
Run:------84h 03m 12s -- 590.46 Mi
Swim:-----51h 35m 35s - 155,560 Yd
Strength:--23h 30m
On your lunch swim workout did you stand to rest? Why dont you actively recover? Just wondering.....
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