Don't hold your breath for Adult Swim

Adult swim was demanding on Monday morning. We were all tired and a little beat up from the weekend. We did our warm ups and a little bit of drilling and then we jumped into the main set.

The main set consisted of 2 x (4 x 150 pink with 15 rest / 8 x 50 purple with 30 rest). If you remember the intensities are the color of your face – white, pink, red and purple. For me the 150’s were to be on 2:26 (I would round the recovery up) and the 50’s on 40 (I would round the recovery down – 20 seconds).

All of the 150’s were a little bit fast – maybe 10 seconds fast. This longer part of the set was no problem at all. I seem to be able to nail the longer lower intensity stuff. I catch myself having to slow it down. But as soon as we started the 8 x 50 – that is where it got hard. I struggle with the high intensity stuff. It becomes somewhat of a breathing issue. I kind of hold my breath and then force it out all at once – I get into an oxygen deficit. Anyway, on the second set of these Coach Steve noticed my stroke count creeping up – I have been trying to hold 17-18 strokes. If I slow it way down I can get 15 strokes. But on some of these 50’s when I was working really hard to hold time Coach Steve said I was spinning my arms at 23 strokes per 50 yards. Wow – that stroke count to creep up and fast.

When we were done with the main set we did some cool down repeats of 200 yards. Since I have been having trouble with taking breaths every 3 strokes (much less every 5 strokes) Butch threw down a challenge to see if we could swim the length of the pool under water. He said it would be good for us. Yeah right. Well, Butch was a natural. He was able to swim the length with seemingly little difficulty. I got about ¾ of the way the first time. The second attempt was no better. On the third attempt I was going to make it hell or high water. I swam along the bottom of the pool and then when the pool got deep I kept going down. The way I looked at it was I would not be able to come up quickly and if I kept my trajectory then I should be able to make the distance. My lungs were burning and hurting and I might have had just a little bit of panic but I was able to complete the task. I embraced the panic. The fourth attempt was just that – I gave up mentally and swam about half a length.