Swim Times to Work Toward

40×50 on 0:40
30×100 on 1:15
12×200 on 2:30 with every 3rd hard (finish around 2:05–2:10; threshold)

Swim a lot, and at a hard effort (in order to get faster and close to the ITU swim times of 1,500 in 18+ minutes).

Times are for short course yards (SCY). Multiply by 1.1 for short course meters (SCM) and 1.12 for long course meters (LCM).

Yesterday I worked on writing out a few life performance goals, season performance goals, and stepping stone goals. One of the stepping stone goals is to get into the pool when all the lanes are full and not neglect or postpone swimming just because there are lots of others there swimming. It started raining about 11:40, so I decided to not swim and to do isos; every Y around here closes the pools if it even looks like rain, so I just assumed DHY's pool would be closed. The Y is about 3 miles away from work, and before I'd driven 1 mile, I noticed that the roads ahead of me were completely dry. We must have been in the little width of Nashville that got rained on.

Then started the 2-mile debate in my head: Do I swim? Do I do isos? Do I swim and risk getting kicked out of the pool if the rain makes its way toward the Y? Do I do the isos that I know I can complete in the time I have? I arrived at the Y under sunny skies, seeing clouds in the distance, having made my decision: Do isos, work hard, make Will proud. I walked into the Y and the pool was full. Yes, full—2 people in each lane, plus others in the kiddie-play/exercise/diving side. Now what do I do? I thought. But I'd already decided, so isos it was.

5 on, 5 off thru 60. Surprisingly, I felt stronger as the time passed. I also tracked HR during this workout (having the chest strap was painful only during crate crunch) and was surprised at how low it was, especially during lunge. I always get so lightheaded during that one that I assumed it was skyrocketing. The highest I saw on the display was 109, but I'll verify that shortly.

• Wall squat (94 HR)
  
• Standing ham (69 HR)
  
• Lunge R, L (94 HR, 98 HR)
  
• Push up (Since each of the other ones one took about 7:30 plus rest, I skipped this one Tuesday and did it Wednesday morning, thru 35, which was as long as I could go while still pushing up)
  
• Preacher curl (79 HR)
  
• Crate crunch (69 HR)
  

By the time I'd finished that workout, I noticed that the pool was empty. It looked like I made a good decision!

Will once told me that when he was training with Charles and some of the other guys, if they didn't get their HR up to max by the 20-second interval, they had to start over. Despite that my HR wasn't high at all, I felt like I worked super hard and he would have been proud of me. My max HR was 112, and that was during a lunge, I'm sure. My HR was higher during the 2-min rest than during the work intervals.

Trainer ride was a good one: 33 min warm up (134 HR), 34 min tempo (151 HR), 33 min cool down (144 HR). I set up my bike and computer on my porch, turned on a movie, and rode away. It never ended up raining, but it threatened and darkened quite a lot a few times, so I was glad I wasn't on the road.