Big Swim

My friend and partner-in-crime Cathy and I have been doing a swim clinic at the YMCA at Town Lake. It is just a blast and our instructor Claire has been doing a fabulous job of dealing with a bunch of irreverent women old enough to be her mom. She’s made it fun (we’ve done a huge variety of workouts, many of which I recognize from my days sitting on the pool deck watching my oldest daughter swim at club and in high school). She’s been helping us with our strokes–and today I got proof.

Swim Workout

Because my daughter’s eye appointment went long, I had to miss the clinic. Rather than drive across town for a swim by myself, I headed over to my home base YMCA on McNeil Rd. I did my strength training and then hit the pool. I had no idea what I needed to do for a workout, so I decided I would just swim laps for 45 minutes, easy and relaxed. And for curiousity’s sake (and because I can’t count in my head), I’d hit my splits for each lap so I’d know what I’d done when I finished.

The swimming felt really good. I tried to swim relaxed and with good form and even pace, and I played around seeing if flip turns or open turns gave me a faster time (the open turns did). I took three short rests of about 28 seconds, just long enough to take a swig of water and defog my goggles. The guy in the lane next to me was some company, as we were pretty evenly paced but he didn’t stay as long.

Well, a mile was up before my 45 mintues, so I cooled down with some fun laps and actually swam 50 minutes. I felt great when I got out.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Now, here’s how I know that Miss Claire has helped me. Because I am a geek, I have a detailed log that has all kinds of numbers…and I knew I’d done this before…so I compared.

When I last did this workout back in August, I ranged from a fastest of 1:07 (which I only hit twice) to slowest of 1:15. Today, my fastest was 1:03 (which I hit twice) and a slowest of 1:11…one just up at 1:04, eight were at 1:05, six @ 1:06…I was pretty darn consistent.

Over three minutes faster than August, too. And it felt relaxed and rhythmic.

I am really pleased about this. Wahoo!