Swimming with Billy

This last weekend (30th March) was the Darlington Masters which I entered. I travelled up the evening before through the downpour that was welcoming BST!! My bed-and-breakfast was just what you'd expect for £30. Actually it was okay for one night, and was only half a mile from the pool (which was my main concern). So after arriving I spent the next half hour walking around that part of Darlington. I've never been there before and Darlington looked quite nice to me, actually on the Sunday it looked a lot nicer as it was warm and sunny.

The main downside to the Sunday was that the electronic scoreboard wasn't working, so you couldn't look over and see where you came in your heats, or what others in your age group were doing. The main swimming downside was that I swam "oddly", difficult to describe really but the morning session (100 free, 100 fly and 100 IM) just didn't click really.

I know I was anxious about the 100 fly, as I've not swum any fly since Rotherham, so in the 100 free I think that played on my nerves and I swam that "slowly". Also I am in the process of changing/experimenting with my freestyle stroke so today was a right hodge-podge of technique. Sad really that I couldn't quite stick to a game plan.

Looking at the entries I could see that I was somewhere in the middle of my age group with some really speedie people a head of me. And true enough throughout the day the results reflected that. Ironically the only event I placed in was the 100 fly where I made a real hash of my final turn. The 100 IM was truly dreadful - I've absolutely no speed on back and breast...

The afternoon was better in terms of swimming, the 200 free was okay I swam to a plan and swam pretty well. My finishing time was 2:23.60 and that was "comfortably fast" I might have been able to go somewhat quicker (probably not but let's dream) except for the fact after the first 50M I'd lost the swimmers either side of me. I did stick to a 4 - 4 - 2, or 4 - 2 -2 breathing pattern and was quite happy with the time.

50 free was okay, and quite fast considering I caught myself getting cross that I'd ignored my own instructions! I'd decided to go out breathing a 6 - 4 pattern, and after my turn I noticed I was just breathing every 4. That shouldn't have bothered me but I started thinking about it, until I had "strong" words/thoughts and got back to the task in hand! Finally the 50 fly was okay, given that I've done zero practice.

I had wished to try my Nystrand straight-arm technique in this meet, but somehow that just didn't happen. But it will happen on Saturday in the next Crusader competition... honest (then I'll find someone's put me in for breaststroke or something!!)

Interesting week this one. The most interesting point was last Wednesday lunchtime when, for a change, I went to Swim Fit where there were just three of us and Craig decided to video us underwater! So he got in and basically stuck his mobile phone in a plastic bag and "happy-snapped" us for ten/twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, the set we were swimming meant I was completely goosed by the time he got to me, so the video is dreadful (both in terms of picture quality and swimming quality). Actually that's not quite true because it shows loads of things that I can do better to get faster. But it's just rather humbling to see just how !("!* you (I) actually look in the water. I am going to post my critique of the videos some day soon (not now though).

The rest of the week was quite hard:

Wed - Swim Fit (happy snapping)
4 x 50 on 50
1 x 50 on 50, 1 x 100 on 1:30, 1 x 50 on 50
2 x 100 on 1:30

Wed - Tri
1 x 100, 1 x 200, 1 x 300, 1 x 400,
1 x 300, 1 x 200, 1 x 100 progressive with RI of 1:00
20 x 50 on 45

Thur
loads of kicking!!

Fri - Buxton
12 x 75 on 1:50
3 x 200 on 3:15 progressive pull with paddles
3 x 200 on 3:15 progressive swim (w/o paddles)
1 x 200 fast

Last night we did a lactate session. There weren't that many people there (no speedies) so I started in a lane on my own, though I was joined halfway through the warm up by one of the younger women of the club. The session was a lactate one and I kind of tried reasonably hard, though seemed just to "hang on" on the 400M swims (I think I swam them slightly harder than recovery swims but not much).

The session in full was:

Warm Up:
1 x 200 EZ

Main Set (swum twice):
4 x 100 @ 80% with 15 RI
8 x 25 fast on 30
1 x 400 @ 80% with 2:00 RI

The 100M repeats I swam breathing to the left and averaged 1:18. The 25M repeats were 14 - 15s and 400M repeats around 5:50 pace.