Well… yesterday was good. Did a hill bike workout (not much of a hill, but repeats of the incline at least) and it felt pretty good. Then worked alllllll day. And then to the gym around 6. Sat in the parking lot on the phone for an hour — trying to figure out how to get my bike out to Moab! Wooo! Good times, but the pool closes at 9 and I had a long set planned! The plan? 250 warmup, 4 x (5×100 z4 HR, 500 z3), 250 cooldown. Yes, 4500 yards. My longest swim in… oh gosh, I’m not positive, but maybe since the IM last April (and maybe ever, since it is longer than the IM swim — coming in at 2.55 miles).
Into the water at 7:23. Huh… my IM swim was 1:37… this is longer… we’ll see if I make the time cutoff… Started swimming at 7:24:30. No watch, so I don’t have splits for laps, but I basically was hitting the 100s in 1:50 or 1:55… and knowing time was short I made them repeats on 2:00… so I was pushing it, and hard! It was great! The 500s I did in around 9:45-9:50.
Things were going great… basically I was on a 2:00 100 paces until the very last 100 of the last set. 25 yards down, I push off the wall. My calf completely cramps — balls up and screams and whines and complains! Owwww… but I keep moving. Hey, my calf cramped the same way (although a bit less severe — maybe since not as I pushed off a wall) at IM AZ last year. You still have to get the job done. So that added about 20 seconds to that hundred, and the final 500 was a bit slower as well. It was cramped up a bit the whole rest of the night, and I can still feel it a bit today.
But I did it. 4500 yards. 2.55 miles. Finished at 8:55:30. Yes, 1:31. Farther than an IM swim, and 6 minutes faster than I swam in AZ. I’m pleased with that!
Drove home, calf still unhappy (left one, and I drive a manual). I knew I’d be fine once I hit the freeway. I wasn’t expected tons of construction traffic at 9:20 on a Thursday night! Oh well… I lived. Painful, but did it. So hey I guess that counts as some kind of practice of keeping moving through pain anyways 😉
FOOOOOD when I got home. And part of a brownie! Hey, I earned it! 😀
Although now this does mean that I (of the running background) has now had a single swim workout farther than my total running for the month. Heh. Might change that this weekend as I’m going to work on getting new running shoes on the way home.
Woo! Congrats. That is a great swim. Your bike and swim are getting so good you’ll have plenty of steam left over to cruise on the run, for sure.
Good luck with the new shoes! Hope you find some orange ones. 😀