A magical swim

Posted by Chen

Quick post to tell you about the amazing swim I had this morning!

A few things you need to know in order to understand why this particular swim was so magical:

• As I mentioned in my last post, my swims always start out as if I’m taking my first strokes ever, and it takes me about 10 laps to remember that I do, in fact, know how to stay afloat
• Although I consider myself to have a solid cardio base (25 marathons have to be good for SOMEthing), I still have a habit of stopping every other lap or so to catch my breath. Deep down, I’ve known this was mostly mental, but I didn’t prove it to myself until today.
• I have an irrational fear of running out of air (though in my mind, this fear is still quite rational), and I often speed up my turnover as a result to get to my next breath, which doesn’t allow me to streamline and glide through the water. This rapid turnover also often results in sinking hips and my favorite feeling of impending drowning, which is always really comforting.

I didn’t have high expectations going into my swim this morning, as my swim yesterday didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped after feeling so strong last week (though I did cross the 2-mile mark for the first time ever!). To add further fuel to the fire, when I showed up to the pool, every lane was taken, meaning I had to be THAT PERSON who sheepishly had to ask a dude if we could split his lane. Luckily, he was super nice and had already moved over to one side as soon as he saw me waiting. He also finished up almost immediately after I got in, so that was a bonus.

Anyway, I didn’t intend to do any long sets today, but within my first lap, it was as if everything I’ve been learning and practicing over the last few weeks instantly came together, and I was moving through the water almost effortlessly. I let myself take long strokes and didn’t panic about staying underwater for so long, which kept my hips high and the rest of my body streamlined.

I felt so comfortable that I swam 10 continuous laps, or 500 yards, as my warm-up. I NEVER swim 10 continuous laps – before today, even 5 laps seemed super long. And because it didn’t feel like I was pushing that hard, I was surprised when I popped up at the end of the set and saw 9:51 on my watch. Yes, that’s terribly slow if you’re a real swimmer, but when I compare that to the 500 I did over Xmas break in 11:54, I cut over 2 minutes off my time!

After wiping the $h!t-eating grin off my face, I proceeded to do my kick and pull drills and managed to do another 2 x 500, getting even faster with each set.  My overall workout looked as follows:

• 500 continuous (9:51)
• 250 kick (5:34)
• 250 pull (5:05)
• 500 continuous (9:44)
• 250 kick (5:46)
• 250 pull (5:10)
• 500 continuous (9:43)
• 250 paddles (5:04)
• 5x50 (0:51, 0:53, 0:51, 0:51, 0:50)

Times aside, the real reason this swim was so significant was that it was honestly the first time that I truly believed I might actually be able to survive my 1.2 mile swim in April and the 2.4 miles in July. Granted, I’ll have to multiply that 500 set by 4.2 and 8.4, respectively, but 500 is amazeballs for now.

Happy Wednesday!