What the FFFFFFandango?
Going from a pace of 1:30 the past 3 years down to a 1:25 this past month has me puzzled
and pleased.
Flashback to my glory days in high school... I was 15 pounds lighter (read as SKINNY) and would regularly stay below a minute per 100 freestyle and had a backstroke PR of 1:04. Neither was good enough to make it to the state finals. So here I am.
I'm older now (much older) and tipping the scales at 155-160 and haven't been running since knee surgery last Dec. I've spent the past few months maintaining with some moderate strength training, swimming and biking. Nothing exciting there.
But, I have tweaked my swim stroke with a quicker catch and focused on maintaining a bent elbow through the stroke with a lot of stroke drills January through March. An old dog can learn some new tricks.
April and May, I upped my swims to a minimum of 3,000 yards per session with a few 4,000's thrown in.
The past 4 Saturday's I've been testing myself with 200 and 300 yard time trials.
The result...
A 1:25 per 100 pace and 1:22-1:23 for 100 repeats. Like I said, WHAT THE eFF!
I don't know how this will translate to an open water swim of more than 1,500 but I'll plan a lake swim soon and find out.
Pre IM Switzerland, 2007.
(check out the goober spit)
My knee is doing well but I still have a ways to go to get my right leg the same size as my left.
I guess it's back to the weight room and more protein.
6 comments:
I'm jealous of your 100 pace improvement, 5 seconds IS a lot!! I wish I could blog about the same thing! Ha. And sub-1 min 100s when you were younger? Holy cow! I can't even imagine what that'd feel like!
BTW, that picture is rad. The wad of spit truly captures the intensity of the moment.
Wow - that is awesome!!
YAY! YAY! YAY!!!!! You've totally inspired me. I've been playing with my swim stroke as well. Kicking still bugs me, but I'm hoping when I put it all together and get my lungs back, I'll have similar results. Well,not exactly similar. How 'bout similar improvements? Yeah, that's more like it. I sure hope so. Keep it up!
Nice! I haven't fine tuned my swimming in years. Haven't been in a pool in a year, either. I suppose I should maybe hop in once or twice before my race in August. :)
But dropping 5 seconds is huge! NIce work!
Recently, I spent a bunch of time swimming for a variety of reasons - it DOES pay dividends, that's for sure.
Love the picture, look like a bad ass to me!
Until you told me to look at the goober spit I was admiring your bulging veins on your arms and shoulders.
Now that is sexy! Goober spit...not as much.
Great job on dropping time!
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