If my training plan is to be believed, I’m kinda hoping it’s fibbing to me at the moment, I should be beating my swim distance PBs repeatedly this month but today saw my first significant jump in distance.
The longest I’ve done done since Marcus set me a plan is 1300m and I’ve only swum further twice before – a 1500 in the pool that killed me and then my Oly race. Today was broken down, rather than a solid block but consisted of a 200, 200, 10×100, 2×200 and 200 – rest intervals of 30 or 20 seconds. For those counting that’s a total of 2000m a whole third more than I’ve ever swum before.
I approached the pool this morning with the same trepidation as the family of ducks I passed on the way in nervously eyed up the frozen lake outside. 200m warm up was followed by 200m of drills of my choice, and decided to play safe and swim with the PB. The 10x100s went by surprisingly well and I was instructed to swim them all fairly evenly. The first was 8 seconds faster than the second but 2 to 10 were all within about 3 seconds of each other. I passed my previous 1500PB during the first of the 2x200s and was about 7 minutes ahead of my previous PB and then I checked off the 1800m mark with only the cooldown to go.
I realised than I could go sub hour for the 1.9K if I pushed it but this was the cool down so I played sensible and ended up being 21 seconds over at 1900 before completing the full 2K in 1h03. Most importantly is it’s now 4 hours later and I’m feeling totally fine. My moving time to get to the Half Iron distance was about 55 minutes and although 3800m is going to take me a long time but I should be well within the cut-off and hopefully not dead. My biggest worry perhaps is having to do 2 hours of exercise that early in a long day without refuelling but I guess I can always sit down for a 3 course meal in T1 – wouldn’t slow me down much compared to how long I normally take.
