St. Patrick's Day Morning

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  My swim suit does not have a hint of green on it—it is black.  My swim cap is yellow with “Cal Triathlon” printed in blue.  Thankfully, no one was up for pinching at 6 in the morning. 

I was excited this morning to wake up because tomorrow is Friday, and this Friday, we are rowing at JLAC with the JLAC women’s team.  Rowing on a different body of water with other boats on the water is always fun to look forward to.  I am probably getting ahead of myself since I still have to get through today!

The first thing I felt in the pool today were my chest muscles from getting out repeatedly yesterday for those sprints with dives.  This morning, we warmed up again with butterfly and Marcia yelling at us to get our butts in the air.  The dolphin kick should not come from the legs, but rather from this undulating wave that your whole body makes.  After the warm-up, we did 4x50yds of free with a pull-buoy, descending.  As we were finishing up the 4x50yds, we saw Marcia with a clipboard.  Why does Marcia have a clipboard?!  Clipboard means SWIM TEST because on that clipboard, Marcia has a list of all your old swim test results and she is ready to record your latest and greatest result.  Today was the 15 minute swim test.  The 15 minute swim test requires focus, good pacing, and strong counting abilities because you have to keep track of the number of laps you do.  After while, it is easy to doubt yourself—was that lap 20 or 22?!  This swim test is probably my “favorite” of Marcia’s three swim tests—15 minute swim, 4x100s, and 400yd kick—because it involves a cumulative tiredness instead of massive lactic acid build-up.  It is like a 6k erg test compared to a 2k erg test.

I swam one lap short of my last record, but I felt pretty strong overall.  We did have some order switching in the middle of the piece because our lane’s #2, 3, and 4 (I was #3) swam in a clump, all at the same pace.  Our #1 was about one lap ahead of us.  In our situation when all three swimmers are at the same speed, the leader, #2, is doing a lot of the work because she is out in front.  #3 and #4 are able to draft off of her.  At some point, I was so close to #2 that I was able to tap her toes.  She moved aside to let me lead the clump, but as a lead, I was basically going the same speed as what she had been doing.  After a few laps of her swimming on my toes, we switched back to the original order.  This reminds me of cycling when you ride in a pack and the pack alternates lead rider while everyone else drafts.  Personally, I am usually too slow to keep up with the pack, and I am paranoid about crashing into someone else.  There are definitely etiquette guidelines for group cycling.

After the swim test, we did 12x25yds of breast with fly/dolphin kick with fins, fast.  Now, here is a stroke I am good at.  For whatever reason, I can go pretty fast with this combination of strokes and fins.  Too bad this is not an Olympic-sanctioned event!