Hardest swim yet!

Quick swim summary: 900 warm up, including 500 of drills. Then, the going got tough with 8 broken 250s, each consisting of 100m hard, 10 sec. rest, 75m "quick", 5 sec. rest, 50m all out, 10 sec. rest, and 25m easy.

For the first five 250s, I held my initial 100m between 1:28 and 1:30. I also did the 50m all out in about 0:45. The entire broken 250m took 4:25 to 4:27 for the first five reps. I'd take 45 seconds between each rep. By the last three, my times began to slow. My 100m's became 1:31-1:33, and my 45m's became 0:47 (my total time for these sets became 4:35 or so). I also took a minute and fifteen seconds rests between sets 6 and 7 and between sets 7 and 8 in hopes of keeping my time low.

Overall, a very tough swim, maybe the hardest I've ever done. Still, swimming is more enjoyable than ever since I feel like I'm making progress.

Swim, plus a short extra run

3,000m down. The main set included 800 pulling with paddles + a pull buoy, 600 freestyle with every 4th length backstroke, 400 pulling with paddles + a pull buoy, and 200 pretty hard freestyle. First a note about my equipment (my swimming equipment, that is). My swim coach, Melissa, said that I'm too much of a weak girly man for these paddles:
Instead, she recommended I pick these up:
The new paddles don't extend more than an inch or so beyond my hand in any direction, yet the paddles still add a substantial amount of resistance during the pull. I think Melissa made a good call.

Next, I do not have a pull buoy, nor does my pool have any available. As such, I did the pull sets with just the paddles, but I will try to pick up a pull buoy tomorrow.

Moving on to the actual workout, I felt good during the first 800 pull. By about 600m I could feel some muscle fatigue across my pecs, back, and triceps.

The 600 also went well. I tried to keep my effort level high, but have a hard time doing so during the backstroke portions. After each backstroke length, freestyle felt great - I felt like I was moving fluidly through the water.

I don't have much to say about the next 400 and 200 - they felt pretty much like I'd expect. For the cool down, I did a mostly breast stroke (if you can call my flailing "breast stroke") and backstroke, and even through in what I hope is double-armed backstroke. A youtube.com search may be in order for me to see proper technique.

Oh, and I did the vast majority of the swim with bilateral breathing, though every once in a while, most frequently after a poorly executed flip turn, I required a breath every other stroke.

I also added a 30 minute treadmill run following the swim. I kept my HR low, around 135-140. After a bad day at work (after restarting my computer, a document I spend about 6 hours working on disappeared for no apparent reason!), I felt a little more physical activity to get the stress out of my system was in order.

Me Swimming

Alright, here I am in all my glory. I haven't seen my self swim on video since Stacey bought me some swim lessons with David Fix at Endure It for XMas back in 2007.

I think maybe my right arm drifts extends outward away from my center-line a bit too much, and my hands move around a surprisingly large amount. On the plus side, I think my forward arm extension has improved significantly over the past few weeks. Effort wise, I'm working pretty hard in the video, and by the third 50 I could feel some fatigue. I don't have a trained eye, but it's hard for me to see my elbow during the catch due to the low video quality.

My favorite part is at the very end when the lifeguard asks Stacey to put the camera away.