I'm Dreaming of a White.....Swim

December 22, 2009

22 inches of snow and a day later the Bethesda – Chevy Chase YMCA outdoor pool was open for business.

The outdoor pool policy at the Y states, among other things, that the pool will be open unless the temp is below 32, or wind chill below 25, or ice on the pool deck…and in the event of snow the outdoor pool will not open until the staff is able to shovel a path from the building to the pool, from the pool to the emergency exit and around

the pool deck. And as you can see in the pictures, the snow had been shoveled. It was very cool! The water was toasty warm, the sun was shining, and the view from water level was as if I was swimming between icebergs.

I brought a ziplock bag along to stash my camera in – keeping it dry between picture snaps. I tried to get the camera as close to the water level as I could, without getting it wet, so I could capture the same view I had when I was swimming.

Definitely a swim I’ll remember for a long time.

Splish-Splash: Like a kid at Christmas I just really got a kick out of swimming with all that snow on the pool deck.

Five 100s Fly

December 16, 2009

Five 100s butterfly – any interval you want…BUT there’s a catch.

Whenever I do some stroke (fly, back or breast) during my workouts it’s usually never more than a fifty or so at once of any given stroke. I’ll do 25s or 50s or MAYBE a 75 or perhaps some 100 or 200 IMs but hardly ever a 100 of stroke. So…the other day I decided I was gonna do five 100s of each stroke with a 200 kick and 200 pull in between each set.

I decided the interval for the 100s (scy) would be 2 minutes (except for the free which would be on 1:20) which is just about how long it took me to stop breathing hard after each 100 fly. While it was hard enough doing five 100s butterfly, during the first one I decided that another requirement of the sets would be that I’d have to do……………………….LEGAL TURNS! And THAT’s the catch of the set. With legal turns it makes it a whole lot harder to get those extra breaths as you coast into the wall kinda on your side with one hand reached out. BOY WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MAKES in the difficulty level of the set.

But on the upside it was nice to do a little more than a 25 or 50 of back or breast so I could have a little more distance to get in a rhythm and/or just work on the stroke in general.

So…five 100s stroke…give it a try…ANY interval you want…BUT…LEGAL TURNS.

Splish-Splash: stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke

Steamed Chlorine

December 14, 2009

Air temperature 34…water temperature 82…humidity @ the backstroke flags – 100 %.

Splish-Splash: San Francisco fog’s got nuthin on Bethesda Y steam.

Cold Steamed

December 4, 2009

Steam rising…it don’t mean a thing – Friday morning swim.

Before and after my swim…a chilly swim at that.

Well, I pretty much hit the nail on the head when I predicted in this space yesterday that the water temp would be on the chilly side this morning. Yesterday it was 83ish degrees and today it was 77 with an air temp of 47! That makes for a chilly combination…rather jolting actually. And it took a good 1,000 to get warmed up.

Today’s swim = 4500 scm

1000

Five 100s kick on 2:10

Five 100s pull on 1:40

Five 400s on 6:15 broken into 5 sets of…two 100s on 1:30 followed by a 200 on 3:15

Twelve 25s on :10 sec. rest broken into 3 sets of…1^st 25 with 3 breaths, 2^nd 25 with 2 breaths, 3^rd 25 with 1 breath, 4^th 25 with NO breath

200 easy

Splish-Splash: chilly willy - Bethesda Cold Springs.

Bethesda Hot Springs

December 3, 2009

Full moon, HOT water - first swim of December.

One day past a full moon this morning – like another street light shining down. As I arrived at the pool the steam was thick and high and that was a good sign considering that this was my first swim in a week and I was looking forward to just getting in some yards and plopping my way back into the grove.

The water wasn’t just warm it was very warm…dare I say too warm. But of course that means someone will complain and the folks at the Y will over correct and tomorrow it’ll be a bit on the chilly side – I hope not.

Today’s swim = 4200 scm

1000

Ten 100s kick on 2:10

Ten 100s pull on 1:40

Twenty 50s on 1:00 UARC

200 easy

I snapped a couple pics this morning and on the above pic I used a different flash setting and the result was a much better representation of how dark it is when I get in @ 6:20ish. And…if you look at the top of the pic you can see that I just missed getting the full moon in the shot as well – RATS!

Splish-Splash: very warm water – Bethesda Hot Springs.

November Totals

December 1, 2009

Well, well, well…been a while since I’ve posted.

The final numbers for November are in and it was a good month. My unspoken goal for each month is to swim fifteen times and THAT’S EXACTLY how many times I swam in November.

15 swims = 62,492 meters = 68,342 yards = 38.83 miles

And that all works out to an average of 4,166 meters per swim.

AND my average weight for the month was 207.9 – I haven’t been down in that area in more than a year…now let’s see if I can keep going…all the way…to sub 200 pounds…and I haven’t been THERE since back in 2003.

Splish-Splash: Winter’s on the doorstep – dark and cold all the time.

As Time Goes By

November 11, 2009

Last week was a good week – looking back.

I swam 5 times last week and averaged 4 grand-ish a swim…that’s darn good. No super sets to speak of but still working in a good amount of stroke.

As I look back at workouts I’m always a little surprised at how much time goes by between benchmark sets. For example, this morning I decided to do a set of ten 300s (scm) on 4:30 – a set I did just a couple weeks ago - so I thought. Today, as I did this set it was a bit of a struggle – I just felt real sluggish. I decided my goal would be to average 4:20 per 300…I couldn’t remember what I averaged last time I did the set. I barely made my goal average but I did make it.

When I looked through my swim notebook to see what I averaged last time I was surprised to see that it wasn’t a couple weeks ago when I did the set but SEVEN weeks ago…and I averaged 4:15. See…I told you it was a struggle today. SEVEN WEEKS?! My, how time flies.

Splish-Splash: Keep a notebook of your workouts – more times than not in comes in handy.