Swimmin'

That's the Middleton/Cross Plains high school pool where I swim. It's a nice pool, but it gets a little crazy with all the kids taking swim class there. A new session of classes just started, and it's a popular one. They're packing 'em in there like sardines. 5 or 6 to a line.

Luckily, they always have 2 lanes open for lap swimming and there usually aren't more than 4 people swimming. I usually share a lane with some dude (the same one every time...maybe I'll ask him his name someday) for about 30 minutes until his workout is done. Then I have the lane to myself for the rest of the night. It works out pretty nice, and the price is right. I was planning on joining a club, but at $60 per month it would cost me about $5 each time I swim if I go 3 times per week. I got a one year membership here and if I swim 3 times a week it costs me about $1.30 each swim. If I swim more, it's cheaper. Sure, it comes with some inconveniences (kids and limited hours) but the cost savings frees up some money for me to spend on other things like recovery drinks. Plus I plan on swimming outdoors a lot next summer so the club would be really expensive since I wouldn't be using it as much as I should. It was a good decision, I think.

Today, I had a great swim...surprisingly. My expectations were low tonight. I went for a ride in the foggy drizzle at lunch with Chris and as embarrassing as it is to admit, he killed me. It was brutal. I kept dropping back. I don't say it's embarrassing because Chris is a bad rider. He's not. He's a very good rider, and me and him have a bit of a friendly rivalry. We ride together a lot and constantly challenge each other. Every hill is a race to the top. It's a given. We don't need to say anything. I have my moments, but I would say Chris comes out ahead more often than not. Anyway, it's embarrassing because Chris wanted to ride what we call the old man loop because he was dead tired from his cross race yesterday....and he rode his fixie. He absolutely destroyed me today. He out climbed me (on a fixie) and out pulled me down Seminole (on a fixie). You name it, he did it better today. I don't know what it was, but anytime the pace picked up, I couldn't breathe. The humidity was 100%, which might have something to do with it but he was dealing with the same conditions. Either way, he definitely got the best of me today. Despite that, it was a decent ride. I had fun...but it would've been nice to have felt a little stronger. Oh well...can't have it everyday.

So after that, my expectations for my swim workout were pretty low. I figured I would try to get through my 2500 yards and go home. But I felt pretty good and was really focused. I came up with a new workout that I have tried to finish twice, and failed both times. It's not that it's that brutal; it's that my conditioning is down a bit after taking some time off. I could do the distance before, but I couldn't hit the times. Tonight, I finished it. It's a good workout. Challenging. I can't wait to do it again. It's made up mainly of short intervals, so it's a lot of short, fast efforts. I plan on coming up with 3 more good 2500 yard workout each with a different focus - medium intervals, long intervals, recovery - and do each workout once a week throughout the winter. That will give me 10,000 yards a week for the winter, and that should really help improve my swimming and set me up for a good summer.

If you want to see something funny, go to youtube.com and search for reaction videos to the 2girls1cup video. They're pretty funny. I haven't seen the original 2girls1cup video, nor do I plan to. I have read the description, and that's enough for me. But people have been taping themselves watching it for the first time and posting it and they're pretty comical.

Ride
Time = 52:39
Distance = 15.61 miles
Ave Speed = 17.8 mph

Swim
Time = 1:10
Distance = 2500 yards