Gaining confidence with harder workouts

My swims are changing. My coach says my stroke turnover needs to get faster. There are so many things to think about.

I have more drills and fast 50s and 100s. I have mentioned the pool in town where I do most of my swim workouts. It is a community pool, and I think every minute is scheduled from early morning until it closes. Generally I go early during one of the adult swim times, and another time is at noon when there is adult and senior swim.

I have started calling it a “fossil fest” where I am the only fossil swimming.

During this time there is one lane roped off for those people who want to swim. The rest of the people stand around visiting or hanging on a noodle and float. I don’t get bored swimming a straight hour because it is quite entertaining. The lane that I swim in has one other person swimming. While I was doing freestyle the other person was on his back doing the elementary backstroke. That is a Red Cross stroke where the person looks like a frog swimming upside down. I was swimming along and all of a sudden this man, who was doing this backstroke, dove down to the bottom of the pool and did somersaults. Soon another man came along in his Speedo, swimming the breaststroke. At least he was swimming on his front. Another man got in this roped off lane and hung on the lane rope for a short time and then got on his back and swam the elementary backstroke and collided with me.

It was quite the morning.

I did get my 2,350-meter swim accomplished in one hour straight (half of it done with pull buoy and paddles). I was happy for my early Friday swim with only 2 other people in the pool. I guess the elementary backstroke was a popular stroke, back in the day.

Swimming wasn’t my only workouts last week.

My bike rides were challenging. A lot of speed work. I think I may have found a good nutrition combination for my long rides. The only problem was it came out in a misting spray from my water bottle all over me. By the time I got home I had a sticky mixture all over my legs and bike. Turns out I had bitten a tiny hole in the straw and there was a pinhole in it.  I was able to ride at a 90 cadence for an hour, and another at a 100 cadence. The  long ride was only 3 hours this week.  

My run was the longest to date, two hours, and I ran/walked 10 miles. There were a couple of short runs with intervals that I was able to accomplish. The weather was hot and humid so I was glad to get the runs accomplished this week.

Each week that I am able to complete harder workouts I feel a little more confident about the race. The swim will be my biggest hurdle. If I can get through the swim I feel pretty good about the rest of it. I still have moments of panic at just the thought of doing the race. I will keep doing whatever training plan is put before me.