Fall of rain, and leaves!

SWIM: 2400y in about a hour, sets of 400 different ways
RUN: 7.5 miles in 1:08, 9:04 m/m pace in FoPa

The morning swim was supposed to be a little earlier morning (I ended up getting there around 8am!) but I was slow to leave the house. The "training plan" I'm "following" in my new little book called for and Endurance Form swim, so I picked the one I was gonna swim last Friday and went with it.

Saw D at the pool for the first time in months! Then focused on my swim. As always I start off feeling great but my form degrades as time goes by, especially as a set gets longer. Today was 400's in different ways: 8x50 drills, 400, 2x200, 400, and 4x100. I was OK with the shorter sets, it was the 400s that suffered at about the 300y mark. And that's not surprising! I don't have the muscular endurance for it yet.

But my form would get awful, and at some point I'm drilling in bad habits. Some reading I did later in the day suggested avoidance of the long sets for this exact reason. Problems I'm noting: my head swivels left and right, my left shoulder drags in the water (off balance rotation), my catch is non-existent, and my timing is such that I "stall". I've looked at more swim toys like ankle bands and beeping-tempo devices to improve front quadrant swimming and cadence, respectively, but at what point do these tools go from help to hinder? Probably at my level, anything is a help.

The run was also going to be earlier, but since my swim ended around 930 I decided to get to work instead and run over lunch. I was also hoping to catch some rain on my run, but it happened that by the time I ran I had only a light rain. The plan was 4-5 miles but I was feeling good, the weather was perfect, the leaves and fall colors were bright and beautiful...nothing like work! So I did the FoPa loop instead of the planned out-n-back.

I went without my Garmin to keep the run casual instead of paced, but instead I spend the run wondering my mileage. Would it be this? I skipped that, what would that have added up to? Is this going to be an even number?

I would have guessed 6.9 miles, but MMR says 7.5. Whoop!