Wednesday Swim

This morning at swim, we warmed up with butterfly, thinking about head down first as the arms come around, low to the water.  Think Michael Phelps.  Now, think the opposite of Michael Phelps.  That is what I look like while doing butterfly--flailing arms, body sinking as I gasp for air, just overall drowning.  Marcia kept yelling at us to keep our head down with our eyes looking at the water.  The main set today was another interesting set.  We did 3x((2x75yd non-free), (2x25yd overkick), (2x25yd free SPRINT)).  Each time we went through the set, Marcia would add an extra 25yd to the overkick and sprint so that on the last set, we did 4x25yd overkick and 4x25yd sprint.

Here is another sure way to get yelled at by Marcia--swim non-free.  70% of the time, Marcia has us swim freestyle, but 30% of the time, we have to swim non-free, which means fly, back, or breast.  Freestyle is generally the most proficient stroke for swimmers and is the chosen stroke for distance swim and open water swim.  Imagine crossing the English Channel swimming fly.  Swimmers can be as crazy as rowers, and I would not doubt that somebody has tried it.  For me, fly is too tiring to do for 2x75yds, but my back and breast are not fast either.  My back stroke is miserly compared to how fast I am doing free.  As for breast, I thought my rowing muscles would help me with the breast stroke pull, but nope.  Marcia always yells at me to glide between breast strokes because it allows you to go faster.  It is counterintuitive because I go no where when I "glide."

I have to admit that when I first heard what the set was, I did not think it was too bad.  At the end of practice, however, we were all exhausted.  It seemed like the overkick and sprinting took more out of us than we thought.  Overkick is freestyle with slow arms, but exaggerated kicking to the point where part of your calves are out of the water.  If you do it right, overkick will take a lot out of your legs.  The 25yd sprints also had a twist because Marcia had us get out and dive for each 25yd.  Diving is interesting because one, it takes a lot of effort to get out the pool repeatedly.  Think about doing press-ups.  Now think about doing the press-ups after sprinting 25yds.  Two, I have not dived since middle school swim team.  Yes, I had a very brief stint on a swim team that had me hating swimming because I did not enjoy swimming in the freezing cold and could not see a damn thing with my goggles.  This was pre-contacts and my parents did not stop to think that I might need prescription goggles in order to SEE.  Thankfully, today, I did not do any belly flops or lose any goggles or swim caps when I dived.

For all the rowers out there, I can only attempt to translate today's swim workout.  It might be similar to three sets of running 2x800m on the track, running 2x400m of stadiums (big stadiums, not little stairs), and then, erging 2x250m.  One of my novice coaches used to call this type of workout triathlons--run, stadium, erg.