Public Shaming

I woke up way before the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning. In fact, it was still so dark I put the outside light on when I left so I could walk down the steps without tripping. Night vision is not on my list of superpowers.

I went to the pool and was on deck 2 whole minutes before the clock struck 5:30am.

In our digital world I feel like saying 'the clock struck...' dates me even more than saying that I know what a rotary phone is and I know how to use it. 

I slipped into the water and sighed. It's been too long since I was a regular pool goer. I knew my body was going to suffer during the workout but I knew it would also love it and want to come back for more.

We warmed up with a typical 1000m swim, kick, pull combo and then found out what our workout was going to be.

16x100m

The first four 100m were on 2:00
The next four on 1:55
The next on 1:50
And the final four on 1:45
No breaks in between other than whatever number of seconds you had before it was time to go again. No stopping.

I had a good idea how it was going to go and it wasn't going to be pretty. I pulled on my goggles and thought: "here goes nothing".

I did the first four no problem and they were all between 1:46 and 1:49 giving me just about 10 seconds rest. Enough to catch my breath and take a sip of Nuun.

By the end of the first four I was already tiring and my speed was slipping. The next four were all about 1:50 and I barely had time to turn around before we had to leave again. I decided during number 8 that there was no way I could do the next four in under 1:50 so I would just do them as fast as I could and, if the rest of the group got ahead of me, so be it.

When I hit the wall after number 8, our coach suggested that I, and another girl, do the last 8 on 2:00 rather than the original 1:50 and 1:45.

Oh thank heavens!

My body was not used to swimming so much so fast and 2:00 seemed so much more reasonable.

We rested for one minute and then took off. I did five in a row and they were all 1:50-1:55 which didn't give much time to rest but gave enough that I could do them all in 2:00. After 5 I decided to take a quick break. I rested another minute and then finished the last 3, all under 2:00.

We then cooled down for 500m bringing the total distance swum to 3100m.

I was pretty exhausted by the end but kept up better than I thought I might after so much time off. And I was all set to get back in the pool on Friday. In fact I announced it to the ladies in the locker room "I'll be back on Friday. See you then!" to which one responded. "You'd better! If you don't I'm shaming you on Facebook."

Swimming friends are the best aren't they? Super supportive and totally willing to resort to threats when needed.