This was a Good Practice

I swore to myself for the next three or four months I’d only spend time on this blog writing ‘editorials’ such as my ‘Living in the Past’ post instead of frivolous posts merely recounting my day-to-day swimming experiences. But Friday’s practice was a milestone of sorts for me so I’m indulging myself. Our practice was 2,700 meters and started out with 4 x 400s @ 7:00 composed of a free swim, a kick, a pull, and an IM. I won’t speak for the rest of my teammates but I was a little shocked seeing that IM on the board. With my recent difficulties swimming in Lane Six, however, I felt obliged to prove I belonged so when the IM came around I set out to swim it instead of, say, taking the opening fly as a drill. I eased my way through fly, recovered on the back leg, and then simply kept swimming through the breast and free. By doing so I actually finished what was my first 400 IM ever as I quit swimming before swimming the event as a youth. And because I’ve only recently begun to swim the 100 fly with fins you could even say this was my first 100 fly as well. Two more pieces of noteworthy news came this same night. I always try to work in as many back rollover turns into practice as possible now and tonight for the first time I found myself able to stop water from coming up my nose in the turn. It is difficult to convey the deep pleasure this gives me, even if I can only do it for a couple of kicks. Progress and no choking burn – could life get any better? Secondly I finally talked to Coach about needing to get some race specific training for my 200 back and he’s going to incorporate some mid-practice timed drills for me. This goes way beyond what I was expecting, which was something more along the lines of timed runs before or after the workout; but obviously to get reasonably accurate times I need to be warmed up (precluding start of practice) and not too tired (precluding end of practice). I love Hyack coaching!