Training Report

Swimming today had an unexpected twist at the end.

I went to the gym to swim in the indoor pool being as it was 55 degrees outside. The workout today called for a 200 yard warm-up, 900 yards of ascending difficulty, a 500 or 1,000 yard T-pace trial (getting an average pace over 1000 yards as a benchmark), then a 400 yard cool down.

I swam the first two parts, then did the 500 t-pace trial (in 10:45) then did another 500 (I felt good and had time left) (in 11:20), and cooled-down for 200 yards by doing some focus drills on technique.

I was very happy to have finished the workout (2,300 yards total!) and then found out that based on this my time to finish an Olympic-distance tri swim would be about 38 minutes. I reviewed the Malibu Olympic Tri results and found, for my age group, that would put me pretty-much dead last. Not a good thing.

Hoping against hope, I called the gym and asked how long their pool actually was, as I assumed 25 yards. 25 METERS was the answer. Not yards, meters! Recalculating, that put me at 33 minutes for the swim (solid middle-of-the-pack) and means I swam about 2,515 yards today! Holy smokes! Converting that to the Braemar Club pool, that would be 105 lengths!

This was definitely much better news! My goal is to swim 1,000 meters in 20 minutes (a 10% decrease) putting me at a 30-minute race swim. Of course the first race isn't until May, so by then I will hopefully be able to swim it even faster. (can you hear the whip cracking?)

BYO Lane Markers

For the first blog entry of the new year (is it the 16th already????) I thought you might be interested in this (if you're a cyclist): Light Lane

In other news, tomorrow I'm riding with a group from LATC starting at the LA Zoo parking lot and going up the hill to the Hollywood sign then back down again (I'm guessing the return trip will be a bit easier). 24 miles or so, 1:45 projected time, first major ride with the tri setup. As an added bonus I'll cruise on over to area "C" and say "Hi" to my TnT friends from last season.