Back in the pool

In addition to my crossfit rise membership, I also have a memebership with a fitness center (got a deal where my membership is $2/mo!) that has a pool among other things. For $70 I get like six weeks of swim training, so I decided to jump in on that. It's offered on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Monday was the first class (which I missed).

In Alexandria I was attending a class on Sundays (occasionally). It was lots of long swims and I felt like I was drowning half the time, not to mention out of breath.

This class was very different in feel. For one, I wasn't the worst swimmer. I was in the slow lane, but I shared it with a lady who couldn't do flip turns, so that made me feel better about myself. Secondly, on Wednesdays they do shorter distances, more like sprints. This meant I was never really out of breath. Like it was short on breath, but I never needed to take long breaks and felt pretty fresh after a few seconds.

...I also liked the fact that they end with a 100m sprint to see if you're getting faster. This was a really fun experience for me, it kind of brought me back to when I used to compete as a kid. The first 50m went fine, I was breathing every fourth stroke (I figured that was fast). When I got to the last 25m, however, I started to feel like I really needed to breathe so I took a breath every stroke for like three strokes. Then I realized how close I was to finishing and I also realized I could go a lot faster. I was focusing on technique so I figured a slower pace would be ok, but then I decided to just get to the end of the pool as fast as possible so kept my head down and moved my arms faster then ever and finnished at 1:17. For that last stretch I felt amazing, I felt like I was finally going fast enough that I was floating on top of the water, I felt powerful. Breathing was irrelevant, because I was going to finish this thing strong.

I'm pretty happy with this time, especially as a baseline. Not too pleased about losing mental focus and toughness, but I think that will come with more experience in the water.

I'm also really glad to be doing this, I think it will help build up my shoulder strength and help with the cardio, very excited to be doing this now, especially with the 100 swim at the end of each class.