Second swim of the day: 4.5K loco

SWIM 1:52 and 4500 yard loco, see picture for details

This morning over my coffee and PreWO I lamented my lack of swimming so far this week. I'd missed my Thursday swim completely, and only did 30 mins of the Wednesday swim. With swimming being my weakness, and the B2B swim being a potentially crazy challenge, you'd think I'd put more effort into it. 

Well, today I did! I had the option to do this swim right after the lesson, but wanted to keep them separate so I didn't cut the 4.5K short by adding in the lesson yardage. So all day long I was looking and planning ahead to this swim. I worked on the loco layout above over brekkie and lunch, rewriting it 2-3 times before settling on what I ended up doing.

A few tricks worked in -- like putting the kick on each side of the 500's to give me some rest, and leaving the last 500 as easy breezy small intervals that would be too hard to put aside. If I'd had stopped at the last 200, I'd still have a 4.5K for today working under the assumption that this morning's lesson had at least 500y in it.

I took a gel right before the swim, I usually don't do that. And had another gel for the halfway point in the 500's. I admit to having a little of that second gel, a salted caramel, before I even started ;)

I mentally broke the swim into 3 parts: a 1500 WU, a 1500 main set, and a 1500 CD. Once I realized that's all I had to do, it seemed less of a challenge. The first 1500 flew by. The set of 3 500's did too, but it was in those 500's that my attention started to wane. Yay for salted caramel!

My lane was mostly empty until the halfway point when I woman joined me, asking if I could share because the guy next to me wouldn't. Serious? Or a joke? I looked at him and realized I might know him! Sure, whatever, share, I'm not getting involved in this. She took his lane when he was done, but she was replaced by an older guy who had a disaster of a swim. (Finally I was faster than someone in the pool this afternoon!). The woman asked me at one point if I'd been clobbered yet, no, "he's a really nice guy, but he swims the middle of the lane." Not yet, but again I didn't want to get involved. But sure enough, I got mildly clobbered shortly thereafter -- OUCH! Then a 3rd swimmer joined the lane, no asking or anything. Thankfully by this point I was in the 90th lap --DONE!!

My "continuous" swimming form felt great, the muscles might complain tomorrow but they'll be resting on the aerobars, no complaining if you're not working! Unlike the 5-1-5-0 swim I did for Michigan, I didn't fall apart in this round. No cramps, no mental cheerleading, no lack of motivation at the end. I did it! Next up a real 5K! Next weekend maybe.