07/13/07: Finally.....

A REALLY good swim workout....

I'll get to that in a minute. First, thanks for the great comments.

Karen - thinking about a 70.3? Go for it. I followed Gale Bernhardt's 13 week training plan in her book Training Plans for Multisport Athletes, and felt completely ready come race day.

Carrie - sleep? What's that? Actually, I've gotten VERY good at napping!

OK, last night's swim. I've been spending so much time working on form, which I've desperately needed, I haven't been getting in a whole lot of distance. Last night I considered skipping the group swim workout and doing a couple of 1000 yard sets on my own. I joined the group after all, and ironically enough, started out with a 1000 continuous warmup, followed by a couple more distance sets with some kicking thrown in. EXACTLY what I needed (other than the kicking) ;-)

Total for the night was 2,700:

1000 continuous warmup

500 swim, 200 kick, 400 pull

4x100 (50 kick, 50 swim)

200 cd

This weekend I am going to skip the group swim and do a ocean swim with the tri group for an hour or so. I decided to do the upcoming ocean marathon on August 4th, and am going to jump in the deep end: 2.5 miles!!

It'll be my longest ocean swim BY FAR. Since there's no time limit and plenty of safety kayakers, I'm positive I can finish, I just don't know how long it will take me. I've been consistently swimming 2:30 / 100m in the pool with very little effort, and should be able to maintain that in the ocean as well, since we'll be swimming point to point with the current. It'll be a great opportunity for me to see where I am and how far I need to go between now and Nov 3. That, and knowing that IM FL is a wetsuit swim has me feeling a lot more confident about 2.4 miles in the gulf on race day.

The rest of this weekend's training is a 1.75 hour run and a 3 hour ride. Fortunately temps are expected to be a little more reasonable over the weekend, with highs of only around 90 :)