We did a session last week (SwimFit) that was shear hell. Actually a lot of last week was horrible. I happened to mention to Craig that we did a grim lactate set in the previous triathlon session (75 best effort + 125EZ repeat 6 times). And I think that inspired him, so the main session was four lots of:
1 x 50M kick fast
1 x 200M free (2:40-45 pace for me)
1 x 25M submerged starting block push
Now the grim bit was the starting block push. Basically each swimmer had a starting block upside down in the pool and had to push it from shallow to deep on the odd repeats and back again on the evens. That was grim enough but the best/worst bit is a friend of mine RT (a chap I work with) comes once a week to these sessions and came to this one. Now to be very fair to him, he's not the best swimmer in the world, he is getting better but swimming (for him) is hard work.
So we set off and me being quicker finished my first two repeats and was on my third 200M swim when RT was heading back to the shallow end with the block. Now for those of you who don't know, Grand Central has a clever contraption the can vary the depth of the "shallow end" from very shallow to 2.4M (which is the depth of the centre of the pool). Usually the shallow end is 1.2M so the clever contraption, about 10M our slopes down from 1.2 to 2.4M.
When pushing the block to the deep end this is "fine", but coming back the other way... well lets just say that poor RT got stuck - got the block to the bottom of the ramp, took a deep, swum down to the block, pushed it about half way up, stopped, came to the surface for a breath, swum down, rescued the block from the bottom of the pool, pushed it up about half way, stopped, came to the surface... repeat as often as you like.
Now I am not laughing - okay I am, because it was funny. But poor RT knew after the first attempt this just wasn't going to happen. And you could see his dilema of not wanting to breathe, but needing to, and then seeing his look as gravity took hold of the block...
Just to let you know I did the decent thing and helped him on this and his second up hill struggle. To be very fair to him, it is very hard work (especially if you don't swim that well) and he never gave up. But without help he'd still be there now.
If he has nightmares about swimming now, I wouldn't be at all surprised!!
