A Great Swim Workout For You

I haven't talked about our early-morning swim workouts in a while.

Friday's whiteboard had us doing some pretty tough swimming. For anyone interested in poaching swim workouts, this is a great one.

The workout was split into two very separate sections. The first was about playing with our rest time. The second was all about brute force.

We warmed up with:
300m swim
200m kick

Then we did:
12x50m on 1:00 minute
I was able to pull off 43-46 seconds per 50m which gave me 14-17 seconds of rest between each one.

When we finished that, we discovered this written on the whiteboard.

4x50m on 0:55
4x50m on 0:50
4x50m on 1:00
2x100m on 2:00
3x50m on 0:55
3x50m on 0:50
2x50m on 1:00
2x100m on 2:00

"I'm playing with your rest time" said Christine.

No kidding.

"Do we rest between each time change?" I asked.

"No, once you start there is no extra rest until you're done."

We looked at each other in fear. We took a few extra swigs from our bottles and set off, not sure if we would be able to keep up the pace. I had two others in my lane. The first started, the second went five seconds later and I went five seconds after that. I did the first 4x50m in about 0:48 (each) so I had 5-7 seconds rest in between. The next four were about the same but, since we had to do them on 0:50, that meant that the first swimmer had already left and the second was pushing off when I touched the wall. Essentially, we didn't stop at all. We just kept swimming.

By the time we were nearing the end of the workout, we were all slowing down and doing 50m on about 0:52 seconds. We weren't even meeting the times.

But it was a really good workout that kept us swimming for 1400m at a really good clip.

We collapsed at the side of the pool at the end, grabbing at our drinks and looking wild-eyed with exhaustion.

This was written on the whiteboard:

10x50m kick on 1:15
swim 100m
10x50m kick on 1:15
swim 100m
cool down

That's a kilometre of kicking. Ouch.

I was the strongest kicker in our lane so I got to lead the troops. I finished the first one in 0:58 which was pretty crazy and a pace that I couldn't sustain. The other nine hovered between 1:02 and 1:04.

The 100m swim was pretty slow as I dragged myself through the water without moving my legs.

Christine decided to switch up the last 10x50m. "I want you to be back at the wall in 1 minute so I'll let you do them on 1:20 so you have lots of rest between each one. And I'll let you kick 5x50m, swim 100m and then kick 5x50m again. You ok with that?"

Yep.

I did them all between 1:00 and 1:02.

By the time we were done, my arms were shaky. My legs were shaky. I was exhausted and yet surprisingly full of energy at the same time.

My blood sugar? It was 4.8 before. I had about 8 raisins before I left the house. It was 4.8 when I finished.

Have I mentioned that I love my waterproof pump?