Like a Mermaid ...

... kinda. If you recall my last blog about swimming this past Thursday referenced here, you read that I had to come to a decision on how I was going to do my swim training. In a conversation with Brandon later that night, we decided it would be best for me to do the majority of my training in my strongest stroke - the breaststroke - and one swim day a week (hopefully of three), I incorporate some freestyle/crawl stuff in to the mix. This is partly to keep it up and partly to see if it gets any stronger. After the tri (78 days!), I'll flip my swimming - hoping I keep it up, that is - swimming more in the more efficient crawl and use less breaststroke for my next race.

That being said, today was aaaaall breaststroke and in about 25 minutes, I swam a total of 800 meters. When I got in the pool, I told myself I was going to start swimming and not stop until I either couldn't breathe, got overly fatigued or both (excepting, of course, my jerky turns at the wall). Well, I did 400 meters before stopping. I probably could have gone further, but my arms were getting a bit sore thanks to the lifting I did yesterday. Silly flyes ...

After a pause to catch my breath, I proceeded to do another 150m (though it may have been 200m; lost count, so i went for the lower number), stopped and then finished up with another 250m for a total of 800m, "sprinting" the last 25m. The best part about all of this is that it made me feel a LOT better about the swimming portion of my triathlon, knowing that I will have the endurance to make it the half-mile on race day and I'll do it in a quicker time than last year.

In a week or two, I think I'll start incorporating some sprints into my pool workout and see what that does. I'm not really timing myself right now because I'd rather just get to the point where my body feels good doing the longer distances. It's sort of my philosophy with running - get somewhat to the point where my lungs/feet/legs can actually handle the longer distances and then incorporate speed work. Though, admittedly, I add in running sprints anyway ...