Warm up
100 yard swim
50 yards pull
50 yards kick
Drill
4 x 75 yards (25 kick, 25 tap front then back drill, 25 swim)
Swim
4 x 150 yard swim with timed recovery
Drill
8 x 50 yards pull with paddles, set focus each time, timed recovery
Cool down
50 yard swim easy
Had a great swim with my swim coach yesterday. Progress is gradual and slow but exciting. I’ve gone from a 50 yard warm up to a 100 yard warm up, and my longer swim efforts with timed recovery have gone from 50 yards to 100 yards to 150 yards yesterday for the first time. It’s still tough finishing that 150 yard effort but that’s 3 times the distance I used to do comfortably without a break. My overall yardage per swim session continues to increase.
I’m feeling optimistic about my goal to swim the entire 1/3 mile swim of Tri for a Cure in July (about 600 yards) without needing to resort to backstroke. I’m fine catching my breath and checking my trajectory with a couple seconds of breast stroke, but I’d like to swim the whole thing going forwards and not zig-zag like crazy on my back because I’m panicked and feel like I can’t breathe and can’t bear to have my face in the water. As amazing an accomplishment as that was, I’m all set with that and feel no desire to repeat it.
I love that I started this journey in 2012 with Couch to 5k and then continued on to half marathons. It gives me a deep rooted belief in our ability to gradually transform ourselves.
When you’ve gone from running only 30 seconds before stopping to running several hours without stopping, you know you can achieve something that feels impossible when you start.
You can accomplish so much when you’re able to say to yourself this feels impossible, and it’s going to take a long time, but I’m going to get better and then just relax and tackle next step after next step, always accepting where you are.
I have until July. I’m going to get there.