Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Drinking water and swimming

A while back a high school friend on Facebook posted something about the 21 most annoying things for swimmers. One of them was this

From: tumblr
So, I've been swimming since I was 7 or something. And now I'm 35, and I can honestly say that water is not part of my swimming routine. And honestly, it's not part of most people's. When I got to my master's swimming workouts there are not many water bottles there.

But still, it got me thinking. I am pretty psychotic about my water. I sweat A LOT!

After every run, and for the sake of saying it I mean any run that is a workout, I drink water immediately after. For any training run when it's more than 90 degrees I take water with me. For any run longer than 40 minutes in hotter than 80 I take water with me. And for any run longer than an hour I take water with me.

For every single bike ride, period. I take water with me.

So I'm not sure why in 28 years of swimming I haven't gotten in the practice of taking water to a swimming workout has got me pondering. To put an end to the pondering, I just took some water to swimming a few times. And, not too surprisingly, it's hard to remember to take a drink. Also let me break down the latest swimming adventure.

400 warm-up
I could have taken a drink after this, but let's be honest, it seems a little silly.

4x100 kick @ 1:55
I'm no kicking stud, so this is really a 400 straight for me. No drinking.

4x100 drill/swim @ 1:40
Good place for water after this. Not before, because the lane mates don't care I suck at kicking.

4x100 choice @ 1:35
Good place to take a drink after this, but I miss it.

7x300 free @ 4:20
It pretty much sucks for me to see 2,100 yards in a single set of 300s, so I get a little psyched out. Though, honestly I should be able to make these right around 4:00 pretty easily. The people in front of me are lane vets (I just moved up) so they plan on coming in around 3:50, too bad for me I fall for it and end up keeping up for the first two, then (thankfully) slowly fade away. The side effect of that is that during my 15 seconds of rest I just pant. The last thing I want to do is put water in my mouth and try to breath through my nose during my rest time. I steal a swig at the start of the fifth one (which I just turned into a 250) in an effort to look more than just lazy, because missing a 50 for water is WAY more acceptable.

100 cool down
"Waters all around!" Except all I can think about is not moving. I'm tired, and it's time to go to work.

So there you have it. If you see me swimming and I have a water bottle that doing more than holding the pool deck in place then I've figured out how to drink water and swim at the same time. Otherwise, I too, do not understand why a swimmer needs water while swimming :)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

November - February Training Notes

I debated posting this. On one hand I think it's interesting to see what other's are doing in their training. And I also use these posts as a sort of reference for myself over the months. On the other hand I'm not sure if anyone else thinks its interesting.

My own views won out on this. So I'm rolling up a bunch of months. October was my last full month of training for the season last year.

November


DistanceTime
Swim0 yards0 hours
Bike0 miles0 hours
Run0 miles0 hours

Ahh, the easy life. I was trying to get fat and lazy. I accomplished the lazy part, but not the fat part. My wife recently told me that the reason I didn't get fat is because when I stopped working out I also stopped eating a ton. That is not something I'm going to spend any additional time thinking about.

December


DistanceTime
Swim
40 minutes
Bike
30 minutes
Run
3 hours
Strength
6 hours

This was mostly just to get in some time building strength and whatever else I felt like. My running time is noticeably higher than the bike and swimming because running on the treadmill at the gym is more fun than the bike and easier than the lap pool. I didn't record distances because this was still off season :)

January


DistanceTime
Swim20,200 yards7 hours
Bike11.45 miles1 hour
Run17.58 miles4:10 hours
Strength
2:10 hours

This was mostly just more lazing around, sort of just trying to get back in the swing of things, the structured training started on the 28th, which is why I have even one hour on the bike.

February


DistanceTime
Swim34,400 yards10:25 hours
Bike153.17 miles10:35 hours
Run41.5 miles7:40 hours
Strength
2:10 hours

And there we have it, the first full month back in the saddle. Most of this was fairly low intensity work, light weights, that sort of stuff.

So there we have it.