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Rest, The Necessary Evil

“You’re not going to be happy unless you’re going Mach-2 with your hair on fire.”

I am the aquatic version of Tom Cruise in Top Gun (So, far less dangerous and coordinated). Rest days are boring. On the other hand, if I don’t take them, I break. I guess I’m not Maverick enough. Until I get rested and start throwing myself against the ocean again 🙂

Oh Lap Swimmers

The vagaries of lap swimmers I generally take with good humor. But when they do something that is stupid AND dangerous, I do get mad. 

I love swimmers – all swimmers. If you want to enjoy the water for pleasure and/or fitness, I am in your corner.

And most lap swimmers have no idea that they are doing anything annoying. They’ve never heard of an interval, they never do sets, or stroke, or kick. And that’s completely fine. They are out there getting a workout and that is great.

But when one climbed into my lane right in front of my flip turn this week, AND then proceeded to push off as I was coming off the wall… I had to tame my inner hulk. I behaved myself, but my inclination was to ask what the hell she was thinking. (So, the kind of hulk who just verbally questions your actions.)

Look, I admit that my flip turns are not the most threatening, as anyone who has beaten me off the wall can tell you, but if I kicked someone in the wrong place, I could hurt them.

So lap swimmers, be warned – Putting me into a position where I could hurt you really ticks me off, and I WILL sit there and stew internally about it!

OW Videos

Sunday, June 5 – no videos, just lunch with Chloë!

Channel Prep

5/31 – talked to H.M., channel swimmer and human physiology researcher. Helped with training plan (don’t do too much before pilot swim – echos of M. and others), perspective on cold and nutrition (she alternated carb drink and tea), channel grease – 1/2 lanolin, 1/2 vaseline – can mix zinc sunscreen right in. And probably several other details I’ve forgotten. It is so great to talk to people who have done it, particularly those with a methodical mindset.

Also – bananas as not only a good thing to eat but also a good pill-delivery method if necessary. (Note – C.M. has found that they tend to be slimy and unwieldy and that people don’t actually want them once they are in the ocean. (Ask for her checklist)

Swim suits are arriving, I am testing them out. (I dislike wearing the skimpy speedo eco endurance, but it performed really well with chafing and has promise with speed. I had horrible chafing in the Nike suit, admittedly on a really choppy day.) Seeing if Ali wants to come to the practice boat swim, testing out other new buoy (inconvenient to carry around; fine in the water), trying to get some rest and somewhat failing (mostly due to getting all of the kids’ homeschool admin stuff together – but at least it’s done and now I just have to wait (with fingers crossed) to hear back from the schools).

The [Time Period] in the Water (Tuesday 5/31 – Sunday 6/5)

Summary

Pool Yardage ~ 10,500 M (Pool closed Th/F for Jubilee)

OW Yardage ~ 25,900 M

Total Yardage ~ 36,400 M

OTHER:

 miles of running – 5

 miles of walking (plus, you know, a lot more) – less than usual – no school

 miles riding – 8.6

In summation, it was a down week, periodization-wise. Necessary, but not that interesting.

The Gory Details

Tue May 31 (~6500 M) 2 h; .5 run; 2 mi bike; 2400 M OW – 55 min

Masters (~4800 M) 1 h 30 m

• 800 (200 swim, 100 kick, 25 bk/br/bk/br)
• 12×25 w/fins kick/swim (fly/bk) on :30
• 6×100 on 1:25 (w/fins) – held around 1:15s, I think
• 20×50 (5 bk on :50; 5 fr on :45; 5 br on 1:00; 5 free on :45)
• 150 ez – kick/drill/swim
• 5×200 on 3:10 (held just under 3:00)
• 150 ez – kick/drill/swim
• 500 w/fins (&paddles, but I thought it might be a bit much)
• 200 on 3:00 (2:50?)
• 100 on 1:25 (1:20?)

Lap Swim (~1700 M) 30 m

• 50 ez
• 1500 – 75 fr/25 bk ez
• 150 ez

I felt pretty fine, especially considering the 10 hours of swimming this weekend. I wasn’t at my peppiest, but I felt like I was taking it easy because I thought I should, not because I really needed to. (And it was probably good that I did – I feel good now, and everything was fine during stretching – better than last week, in fact, when my neck was still bothering me on Tuesday.)

OW Swim

• 5:00-5:53 PM
• 2400 M
• 59 degree air (so much wind that it did not feel like it – or my tiredness made me perceive colder (not a problem once I was fighting the waves, though. Well, tiredness yes, cold no.)
• 14 degree water? I keep forgetting to ask the guards
• windy stupid crazy chop – the demoralizing kind

Ugh, my head was not in that at all. It was a crazy choppy swim, and I had no patience for trying to improve my performance in the chop today. I couldn’t focus, my neck was chafed enough to start stinging halfway through, and my enthusiasm for being there waned quickly. I also couldn’t see where the kids were, which shouldn’t have bothered me but did. I kept seeing imaginary jellyfish as well – all signs that, for whatever reason, my mental game was down.

BUT, always an upside. I did make progress, even though I felt like I wasn’t, and went my normal distance for a choppy day (in a bit less time even). So if you can’t focus, focus as best you can, and the day will not be lost. I stuck with it, and that’s enough for today.

Wed Jun 1 (~4000 M) 1 h 35 m; 4.6 mi run

Masters (~3000 M) 1 h

Gah. One of the times I’ve been most frustrated by our 7-to-a-lane-with-2-significantly-faster-than-the-rest arrangement. It was a recovery day for me, so I was going at the back. I could neither hear the coach nor see the whiteboard, so I never knew what we were doing. And even though I was on the feet of the person ahead of me, as usual I got caught by the lead guy on 175s.

I didn’t even try to figure out what we did or how many yards it was, I decided I’d call it 3000 and just swam through it. It was fine in the end, but I spent my time coming up with better ways to run the lane 🙂

Lap Swim (~1000 M) 35 m

My pace here was kind of dominated by the crazy woman in my lane – since she was crazy, I just swam to stay as far from her as possible 🙂 It was nice to get some real recovery yardage in.

• 20×50:
• 4x fr/bk ez
• 4x fast/ez
• 4x IM kick
• 4x IM drill (stretch it out)
• 4x fr/bk ez

• 100 CD

I’m glad it’s 10 AM and I’m done with my athletic day – that’s what I need today.

Thur Jun 2 (~3000 M OW) 1 h 15 m

OW Swim

• 12:30-1:45 PM
• 3K
• Air temp 63
• Water temp 14?
• Sunny and beautiful… but the chop got more insidious with every lap.

Or perhaps I got tired. That would be pretty unusual for me though. I did take it easy and just took as long to do 5 laps as I wanted to. (Countered by the fact that I kinda wanted to get out – I didn’t get as early a start as I had hoped (housework is stupid), so I was sorta ready to be done.) Anyway, it was fine and I had a chance to try to use as little energy as possible in significant current, wind and chop. I was mildly successful.

I tried out the Speedo Eco Endurance Plus Thinstrap – no chafing at all, for what an hour of increasing chop is worth. It slides down pretty far in the front. I’ll have to remember to pull it up before coming out of the water 🙂 Hard to tell if it was fast. I will probably try it on Saturday.

I stopped to talk to a woman during lap 2. She was doing a relay qualifier, was very motion-sick and had apparently just thrown up. I asked if there was anything I could do to help – she said no. She only had about 20 minutes left, and she talked to me for a few of them, so hopefully that helped some.

Friday Jun 3 – Rest day (and boy did I need it). No practice again today for the Queen’s Jubilee, and when I thought about the fact that I needed to go for an open water swim, do the grocery shopping and cook dinner, I concluded that I could only do two of them. If that is as much as I feel I’m capable of, it’s definitely time for a rest day.

Sat Jun 4 (~10,500 K OW – 3 h 10 m); 4.4 mi ride

• 8-11:11 AM (not counting brief cool down and get out – 4 minutes?)
• 10.5K
• 17 degree air
• 14 degree water
• Cloudy, windy, bouncy day. Started off with rollers, moved on to choppy, slam-you-into-the-ocean business, with the wind and tide in opposing directions.

• Temp 1 – 35.7
• Temp 2 – 35.9

It was hard, but I felt like I swam well, so I’m happy.

I did not expect to get my full laps in, so that was a pleasant surprise. (Although I originally intended to go for four hours 🙂 But I would have been the only one, and it didn’t make sense to keep the volunteers waiting around just for me. Three hours in those conditions was plenty. But it was nice to feel that I could have gone further easily.)

I did wear the speedo eco endurance suit – I guess this counts as a checkmark in it’s column. Man is it skimpy though!

I was not cold.

• First lap:
• My watch time – 1:02
• Clock time – probably right at 1 hour
• Swim time – same
• Fed from my buoy for 2 minutes

• Second lap:
• My watch time – 2:06
• Clock time – 2:04
• Swim time – probably 1:02 if you don’t count the feed (and it does take me more time to have to get into the buoy and close it up again
• Conditions – Ali agreed that the wind had picked up (and if there was a calmer time, which I think there was, it was sadly while I was with the wind. That was the only point that I was able to easily see the shore)
• Fed from shore – both choc milk and peaches, and I made sure Ali and Neil were OK with staying a few extra minutes for me to complete the whole third lap, so this one probably took at least 4 minutes

• Third lap:
• My watch time – 3:11 (before cooling down into shore)
• Clock time – 3:09 (later by the time I got out)
• Swim time – probably 1:01? This seems fast, since I wasn’t pushing as hard, but perhaps my efforts towards efficiency paid off better than I thought.

Sun Jun 5 (~10K OW – 3 h); 2.2 mi ride (got a ride home)

• 8-11 AM
• 10K
• 14 degree air
• 14 degree water
• Much better conditions than yesterday. The first lap had some spicy wind on the way back, but it calmed down for laps two and three.

• Temp 1: 36.6
• Temp 2: 36.1 (even after being made to sit there in the water for 3 minutes at the end)

I felt a bit off after yesterday’s swim (nothing specific or shoulder-related, just generally off), so I wasn’t sure how today would go. And then C didn’t show, so I decided I’d just do a couple of hours and live to fight. But as I swam back toward the beach hut on the first lap, there she was in the water 🙂

So we did three hours, which was great, and then went out to lunch which was even better 🙂

First lap – right at an hour, even with some chit chat

Second lap – right at two hours; fed for 2 minutes

Third lap – 2 h 58 minutes, which I was really jazzed about until I remembered that I had cut it a bit short since C didn’t come in for a feed and I just met up with her after mine. However, it probably wasn’t too far short, because we were WAY far from shore, so I definitely added some yardage swimming in and out again.

I swim so much faster when there is someone there to make me focus. And boy do I like being in front 🙂

Postscript – even though I felt a bit dodgy after Saturday’s swim and then had pretty bad stomach pain on Sunday night (possibly the ham?), I still felt way better after taking Friday off than I did before. Sometimes it is right to skip a workout. If only it were easier to determine when those times are. (Although for me personally, as much as I enjoy swimming, if I don’t feel like it, it’s a good sign that I shouldn’t. But I am getting to a level of training that has even me bored with the water sometimes 🙂 )