Swim notes

I sort of quit swimming after IMChoo for a few months, and it's been  interesting trying to get back up to last spring's strong numbers. Interesting might not be quite the right word :)

I was not 2016-brave-flexible enough to sign up for the 1000yd race at Colony Zones this year to see how my racing self compared to last year's racing self, but have some glimmers that triathlon racing might work out ok. Yesterday we had a main set of 200y, 400y, 800y, 400y, 200y with the goal of even pacing. We ran out of time for the last 200, but the times were 3:22, 6:46, 13:25, 6:45, which are a 1:40 to 1:41 pace, so I'll take it! I was leading the lane, and using the clock to help, so it wasn't intuitive swim pacing like I did last year when I did a similar set around the equivalent pace in a 25m pool, but it's a good sign.

Other positive swim things:

1. I am stronger in many ways than I was last year at this time, and am working on increasing physical flexibility, thanks to the 2016-yoga-thon. I think this will help if I start to increase the volume of my swimming
   
2. I am working on correcting my hip drop in running, and am working on translating that awareness to fixing the very similar hip-rise that I'm doing on the opposite side for swimming
   
3. I have new toys coming to try to fix this! Yay toys! First off is a snorkle so I can work on just swimming with symmetric rotation and remove all the weird things I do while breathing. Second is also something that should help with symmetry, and hopefully also timing. This thing (called the "Tech Toc") looks a little ridiculous, but I'm curious to try it out, and we had a half-price discount code through the masters swimming team, and half price toys are twice as good as full-price toys, right?

Hopefully I'll get to add some more noteworthy progress results to my swim log, moving forward.

Lake swim race report

There isn't much exciting to report from the race itself.

I prepared well

1. eating a reasonable breakfast reasonably early
2. wearing a swimsuit that I was ready to see turned murky from the algal lake-life
3. packing relatively new goggles with tint and polarization for the long part of the swim into the sun

And I did well!

I was seeded in the fifth wave, which meant that I got run over a bit, but the big pack of wave 6 swimmers didn't catch me until the first turn.

I had Garmin set up to buzz every 10 minutes, so I had a "reset button" to restart my attention to form and the fact that it was a race.

I had grand hopes of a sub-30 finish, but given my history, that would have been a little ridiculous, so instead I was happy when the watch buzzed 30 minutes as I was coming up to the last turn.

Overall, it was my best 1 mile lake swim yet at that venue! Hooray!

2009 - 36:28
2010 - missed signup deadline
2011 -  35:18
2012 - 33:28
2013 - 33:20
2014 - went camping on Memorial Day weekend instead of swimming
2015 - 32:33

Colonies Zone 1000y FR Race Report

Finally! Improvement in swimming!

I've raced this event at the April meet 5 times, and have a number of ways this was my most solid performance yet

2010: I was still in my first year at Team Z and identified myself as a swimmer. I had no idea how to pace a 1000, and my splits showed it with a 17 second positive split between the 500's.

2012: Nothing special performance 9 seconds slower than 2010.

2013: Aiming for some redemption, I started from the blocks, and then had a person in my heat to chase down for the second half. There was only a 2.5 second positive split between the 500s. I took 2 seconds off my 2010 time, and had a great race.

2014: I started from the blocks, but had a hard time pushing the limits on the pace. When it felt uncomfortable, I backed off, and had my slowest performance yet, almost 20 seconds slower than my PR.

2015: I was late to the event and was placed in the last (slowest) heat. I'm very thankful that they made room for me, and talked with my heat mates in the hour leading up to the event explaining and apologizing -- hopefully I didn't seem like a speedy jerk who didn't understand seed times. After all the traffic anxiety getting there, I made time for a long warmup, including some 100's with and w/o pull buoy to try to hold the memory of what good body position feels like
I had a great dive, and strong first 100. After that, I settled into what felt like steady pacing. My splits agree with that with 1 second between the fastest and slowest 50's for the main part of the race. I was able to kick it up for the last 50 (probably should've tried harder for last 100) and got my fastest non-dive split for the finish.
The end result of this steady, pushing swim was a 15 second PR and a pace of 1:32/100y

In the grand scheme of triathlon-ing, swimming faster won't affect my day much, but it's my favorite part, and seeing improvement at something I've been doing for so many years now is lovely.

Data nerding:

Broken 1650's and swim test sets

I love, love, love data, and love my Garmin 910 that helps me gather swimming data, but unfortunately, it's hard to remember/dig up/decode results of some past swim sets, even with all that data.

In the last few weeks at swimming we've done three different test sets
1. 1650 for time, straight
2. Broken 1650 with structured rest, subtract 2:30 to find swimming time
3. 16 x 100 on an interval with a 50 sprint at the end.

Sharing a lane is lovely because of all the drafting, but it can also be tough to get a "good" test in. For instance in the first test, I was with some people who were too much faster than I am, so I was lapped enough to only get 1500 done before it was time to move on to the next part of the workout. It was a good 1500, but it's certainly a caveat-ed result.

The second test was awesome, and if my results are slower than some other time I've done it, it's just because I swam slower.

Today was the third of the tests and it was awesome. I was drafting, but strong, and hit the 1:50 intervals, which I've never done before (that I can remember)
Anyways, so at the risk of being even more of a "training log", I'd like to archive some results so I can come back to them more easily.

Date	Test	Result	Pace	Notes
1/27/15	1	24:30	1:47/100m, 1:38/100y	1500 yds
2/3/15	2	29:28	1:47/100m, 1:38/100y	Time after subtracting, 25m pool
2/12/15	3	1:50 interval		Made all send-offs, 1-10 sec rest, 25m pool