Early morning swim

I don't normally get up so early to get to the pool at the time it opens (5:30 am), but this morning I had an awesome dream that ended at 5:15 am so I just got up and decided to go swim and get a head start on the day. This is the last workout I've got for this week from coach JaGal. Our family heads out late this afternoon for a very long road trip to northern Oregon for the Columbia river half/full marathon. Jacob and I are doing the half and Cathi's doing the full.

Here's today's workout:

400 warmup

Wow - I can really feel my pecs thanks to Tuesday's lifting session. Should help with the distance sets to let the pecs get the stretch and pull. I notice I don't get as tired on distance sets when I let my chest take more of the work and less of the arms and shoulders.

1000 - 20x50 free(odds- 20 yards fast, rest is easy. evens- do not push off wall [floating start] and 15 yards fast, rest is easy.) on 45.

These were fun! And the 45 seconds interval was perfect. Only got about five seconds rest on each

800 - 1x800 relaxed stroke...zone out, channel pace. get time. (11:23) on 12:00
800 - 2x400 get 1/2 of 800 time - 5:40 (5:40, 5:40) on 6:30

Amazing how I got both of these. I cheated just a little on the second one by looking at my watch on the last flip turn to see how my last 25 needed to be. I could tell I was on pace so I just kept the same speed and ended up getting the same as the first one to the exact second! Had I not looked at my watch I probably would have gone one second faster on the second set.

800 - 4x200 (get 2:50) average of 2x400s, half it, and hold it equally for 4. on 3:15
*remember, this is not hard.*

The workout actually called for 3 of these, but I misread and assumed that halfing the distance also meant doubling the reps. So I ended up doing an extra 200.

200 - 4x50 drill choice on 1:15
100 warmdown

total 4100


What a great workout. It was kind of hard holding back and doing a distance pace. Even though I'm sure I would have bonked if I tried going faster on the 800 or 400's. It's been a while since I've gone at a "base pace". Which is good considering I have a meet coming up in 3 weeks.