San Diego swimming
It’s a cool, windy day in San Diego. It rained a little this morning, but it’s mostly sunny out today. I guess it’s threatening to rain this afternoon, but I swam this morning and it’s my only workout of the day. Elizabeth and her family are driving down here today, as are my grandparents. Elizabeth is hoping to get in a run this afternoon, so hopefully it will stay dry at least until after she runs.
I swam today at my parents’ YMCA. The pool was pretty nice – 25 yards, 6 lanes, windows all around, huge skylights in the roof. It’s so much nicer to swim in that environment than in the basements that I’m used to. The pool wasn’t very crowded – a few swimmers, a kid swim lesson and a water exercise class. I was scheduled to swim 3,100 – the main set was sets of descending lengths – 400, 350, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100 with 50 yard kicks in between – at my new “T pace” from the other day, 1:44 per 100. During my 1,000 yard time trial the other day, I averaged about 1:44 per 100, so that has become my “T pace” for training purposes until my next time trial. However, since I haven’t really worked much on pacing, I couldn’t tell how much effort equaled my “T pace”. Also, my watch that I like swimming with died the other week. I replaced the battery before my time trial and thankfully it worked for the time trial, but I guess I didn’t get the seal on it all that great, because during my warm-up set today, it died again. (I’m not f-ing with the battery again, so I just threw it out.) I knew that 1:44 isn’t anywhere close all out, I thought it was somewhere around 7 out of 10. I swam the first 400 and when I finished I looked at the clock and had done the 400 in a little over 6:00. At my “T pace”, the 400 should have taken me nearly seven minutes. The pace I was swimming at felt pretty good, so I layed off just a little but kept my sets closer to 1:30 than 1:44. I didn’t feel my best today – my shoulders were a little stiff and my head was just a little cloudy. Not enough to really limit me or to make any excuses, but just a little off. I don’t think I’ve been drinking enough fluids since we’ve been out here. That is one benefit of sitting at a desk all day – my bottle of water is right there at my hand all day long and I drink from it the whole time. Not saying that I’d rather sit at my desk, but I guess that is a bit of silver lining… I’ve also been eating pretty poorly out here – and a lot of it; more sweets than I’m used to, more meat, more crappy carbs. All excellent food (barbeque, cookies, burritos, tons of crackers), and this is what you’re supposed to do on holiday, especially holiday with family.
Tonight, we’re having the Shaffers and my grandparents over for dinner. It should be another night of a lot of eating. Below is a picture of the kids with our grandparents.
Swim – December 27
Distance: 3,100 yards
Time: 1:10