3600!
The last two weeks I was pretty proud of myself, thinking that swimming 3,000 yards in one session was some kind of big accomplishment. This morning when I checked my scheduled training session and saw that it was different, I scrolled through it to see the total: 3,600 yards. Wow. It wasn’t that the extra 600 yards were a huge deal, it was that I was piling an extra 20% onto what I already considered a tough workout. I was also remembering the days when I thought that swimming 1,800 was a big day.
3,600 yards is a little over two miles. And this workout wasn’t an “easy” 3,600 with lots of kicking or drills. The main set was 9 x 300, broken up with a couple 50 yard kicks. But I did it. And did it pretty strong. By the end of the session, I was certainly feeling it, and probably not swimming very straight, but I felt pretty good the entire time. It also wasn’t that long ago that a 300 yard set was a pretty big deal for me. Today, I did nine of them. And recently I’ve done 600-800 yard sets without too much trouble. Slowly but surely, I’m getting there.
Tonight I went back to the gym for strength training. The gym was an absolute zoo and doing a circuit isn’t really that easy in such a crowded gym. I improvised and still managed to get in a good workout. It’s a strange feeling to get back into weight training. Just a few years ago, that was pretty much all I did. And I loved it – I liked the specific way it made me sore, I liked being “bigger” and I liked being strong (at one point in law school I was convinced that I could get up to benching a couple reps of 300 lbs. – that never happened, but there have been times when 250 was possible). During my first season of triathlon training, I still lifted a fair amount, but began to have trouble squeezing it in. That season I was barely doing any bike training and swimming no more than twice a week. I was also running a lot indoors and rarely running more than 5 or 6 miles. All that combined meant that I still had time to lift. Last season, as I trained for Timberman and the marathon and increased my cycling and running and swimming, strength training pretty much got left behind. I can’t say I really missed it! I do enjoy getting back into it – I’ve always felt that strength training helps prevent injuries and can only help my body withstand longer aerobic training sessions. The training that I’m doing these days is very focused on big muscles – legs, back, chest. As long as I’m training for triathlons, I know that I’ll never have enough time to do the strength training that I used to do, and I’ll never be as “big” or as “strong” as I used to be, but this is better. Triathlon training gets me outside and it’s training towards a goal.
Swim – December 11
Distance: 3,600 yards
Time: 1:15
Strength training – December 11
Time: 45 minutes