Brag

Brag alert! If a little boasting disagrees with you, maybe you want to skip this post. Normally I don't crow too much except when I best Randal Beets in some sort of swimming event. And I am well aware that any real swimmers who happen to see this blog will think my times are a) shockingly slow, b) pathetic, or c) embarrassing. Probably the correct answer is d) all of the above.

But I am an adult-onset swimmer, and I'm excited about the progress I have made especially over the past year. At Masters practice last night, I broke my 400 short course PR not once but twice. And I wasn't even swimming all out. The instruction from our coach was to go hard but not full speed.

I never can remember my own records, but I dutifully record my workouts and records in a training dairy. Among other things, we swam 3 X 400 hard but not full speed. When I got home and checked my records, I discovered I had broken my 400 time not once, but twice, from 5:52 to 5:50 and then 5:48. It's been a good year like that.

It was 2006 when I joined the Masters group at DSU. I didn't swim that much in '06, but it was the most I ever had swum. Each year I did a little more. Only in 2010 did I swim enough that I started totalling everything up. I swam 311 miles in 2010, 409 miles in 2011, and this year I am at 506 miles and counting. I guess you can see the trend.

This year I have set all sorts of distance records like most meters in one week (42,000), most distance in one day (13.94 miles), biggest pool workout (12,100 long course meters) and many others. Also, almost every distance I have swum for time has produced a new PR. Long course has seen me PR in 50, 100, 400, and 500. For short course, I PRd in 300, 400, 500, and 800. In the open water last July, I smashed my half-mile best by 46 seconds at the Heart O' Dixie Triathlon lowering it to 11:56.

I'm a little excited.

I hope the records continue to fall, but I know at some point they will fail to do so. When that happens, I'm sure I can still be happy because I love to swim for its own sake. In fact, I love that all-day pace more than the lung busting effort it takes to set a PR in the pool. I'd rather swim long than fast. What I really want, however, is to swim long and fast at the effort I love to swim at now. That feeling I get when I am swimming smooth and feel like I can go all day is one I can't get enough of.

Well, If you've read to this point, the brag is over. Last night we swam

1,400 warm up
2 X 800 as first 800 50 back kick/50 swim with fins; second as 25 kick/75 swim with fins
5 X 400 as 1,3,5 hard, 2 and 4 as 50 back kick/50 swim no fins
200 easy
Total: 5,200 yards = 4,752.8 meters

Also, Monday I ran 2.01 and Tuesday I ran 4.32 miles. Today, I need to lift some weights.