Who Said Swimming Was Hard?

I was able to shake off my poor swim workout for the rest of the night on Tuesday, but at work on Wednesday it was like a stain on my pride. It was in my head, gnawing away at what little swim confidence I'd built up in the last month. I felt like a baseball closer who had blown a game: I wanted to get back on the mound as soon as possible. So I tinkered with my training schedule and went straight to the pool when I got off work. It was my first "Week 5" swim, which meant the following:

• 500 warm-up (4x25, 2x50, 2x75, 2x50, 2x25)
• 500 long
• 6x100m
• 10x50m
• 12x25m

I took the warm-up as slow as possible, and I felt pretty fresh, but the 500m long swim seemed like a daunting task. I got started, felt okay after the first 100m, but by the 200m mark I was already bartering with myself. "Okay, if you can't do more than 250 then stop and rest for 30 seconds before doing the rest." That sort of thing. But 250 came and went, and I fell into a nice groove and finished the 500 without much trouble in 10:01. Doing 75-free/25-breast really breaks up the monotony of the long swim and gives me something to focus on. 

I moved on to the sets of x100, and felt so good that I did 8 instead of 6. During the 50's my right shoulder started getting exhausted; not sore the way it has gotten in the past, but "dead" the way it gets when I've done 5 sets of barbell overhead press. Weight lifters call this the "pump", and I'm sure I got this because I swam two days in a row. I was happy that this was my limiting factor instead of cardiovascular exhaustion, so I did 5x50 and 4x25 before exiting the pool victorious. My success was immediately rewarded by an ice cream social that the neighborhood was hosting at the pool. 

Before now I've been scheduling each pool workout rigorously: warm-up, long swim, and then this many sets of 100, this many sets of 50, this many sets of 25. I'm thinking from now on I won't be so strict. I'll keep the warm-up and the long swim the same, but beyond that I'll just do as many 100's I can and listen to my body for the 50's and 25's.