No Air

Yesterday's winds continued blowing this morning, and rain was added into the mix. The lake looked dark and uninviting.

This morning's swim was brutal. The main set started out with 6x75yd fast breast stroke pull with two dolphin kicks with fins. For whatever reason, I am one of the fastest when it comes to swimming or kicking with fins, but for everything else like normal swimming with no fins, I am pretty average. Thus, for this 6x75yd, I was a #1 in my lane. The next set was 6x50yd with no fins--1st 25yd was breast stroke, focusing on quick hands, and the 2nd 25yd was freestyle overkick, thinking about kicking with big legs. I am pretty horrible at breast stroke, and Marcia always yells at me to keep my head down or to glide when it comes to breast stroke. For this and the rest of the workout, I gladly became a #2 in my lane.

This is the point when the workout became brutal. The third set was 2x25yd of underwater flutter or dolphin kick with NO BREATH the whole way and with no fins. Usually, this underwater kick is done with fins, which makes it more reasonable. The first 25yd was not too bad because we had some rest between sets, and most of my lane was able to do the entire 25yd with no breath. The second 25yd was more challenging, but completed without incident. Now, Marcia had us do a 2x50yd with the 1st 25yd underwater kick with no breath and 2nd 25yd sprinting free. If you were not able to complete the entire 1st 25yd with no breath (and I was not able to complete the entire 25yd), then, wherever you came up to get air was where you started your sprint free. This felt pretty bad, sprinting when you have no oxygen left because you were not breathing for the first 20-25yds. Marcia was animated, waving her arms up and down, telling us that we really do not need so much air, not to breath so frequently during the sprint, and swim faster! Then, she told us we were doing FOUR more 50yds like that. I think we almost died.

This workout was designed to simulate the oxygen deprivation that we will be experience tomorrow during our swim test. Shit, shit. I hate swim testing, almost as much as I hate erg testing.

As for translating today's swim workout into a rowing workout, it would something like 6x500m at a 26-28spm, 6x(30 seconds at a 24spm and 30 seconds at a 26-28spm with a focus on legs down), and a bunch of short sprints. I have no idea how you translate NO BREATH into rowing.