Swim 1/31

Hit the pool and for the first time, I wore my watch in. Why didn't I think of this before? I'm too lazy to put on my contacts for a pool workout, and thus I never really had a good sense of how fast I was.

I warmed up with 5x100 wearing fist gloves. Each 100 took between 2:15 and 2:20, and I took 19-20 strokes per length.

Then, I did 5x100 without the fist gloves. Each 100 took between 1:55 and 2:00, and I took 16-17 strokes per length. That works out to be about 5 seconds faster per length without fist gloves.

This sounds nice and all, but for this 1000 yards, I was pulling as hard as I could through the stroke. I am unlikely to do that during the entire ironman swim.

So I did my last 500 yards (2x200, 1x100) just swimming relaxed, not pulling particularly hard through the stroke. My number of stokes increased to 18-19 per length, and time for the 200 yards averaged around 4:30.

Some quick math shows ~9 mins for 400 yards means ~90 mins for 4000 yards, so I am in the ballpark for correct pace. A calculator shows for the 2.4 miles (4224 yards) I would finish around 95 minutes at that pace.

I'll keep doing the TI drills and using the fist gloves, as they promote efficiency.

Total time: 44 minutes, including rest time between each set.