Feeling entirely justified in my inhaling of two rounds of toast when I got in from my swim this evening, because, ladies and gents, I have just pulled off 3.5km in 1hr 29mins and
still had more in the tank even after not training pure distance properly in at least a couple of months. So there. It was a great swim, I'd say 95% numpty-free - just a few slower people who had the courtesy to either wait or switch lanes and one dude who just couldn't get the lane rhythm right. I had to wait around a fair bit for him or I'd have been up his shorts, yuck. I can really, really feel the difference the Masters sessions have made; I'm paying a great deal more attention to the technicalities and correcting where I can rather than trying to brute-force the distance. For example, my left arm has a tendancy to drop into the same pattern as a ripple drill when I get tired, so that was nice and easy to deal with. I do still need to get a coach to look at my rotation and breathing as I think I'm over-extending my head to the right and not turning enough to the left in the hip.
So where does that leave me in terms of events...I took tonight's swim as a single set so I don't have the exact times, but my 3km (120 lengths) was 1hr 17mins, and 2 miles (128 lengths or 3.2km) was 1hr 22mins. That includes a few minutes stoppage time for drinks, numpties and the splitting of my favourite swimming cap. Boo hiss. I still have some work to do to get to my target of 2 miles in 1hr 15min before Windermere, but I would like to note here that this is an improvement from the last time I did 2 miles, in September, of
eight minutes. I think I can safely say that's all due to the incredible coaching and encouragement I've had from all the folks at
USWIM. Speaking of, their new
events listing has just gone up - this is going to be an expensive but very enjoyable season.
Onwards! I still want to get that 5k under two hours...
