I did not expect distance free day to be my breakthrough day. But it totally was. What is this madness. I've felt really restrained about my swimming recently. I want to say it was limited to the past month, but in reality I think it stretches all the way back to like September-ish of last year. I mean sure, I'm slower, which factors into it, but I think more than that what's been frustrating for me is that my heart hasn't really been in it. I've been doing this long enough that I know I'm at my best when I get in the pool and feel like swimming fast and pushing hard makes me come alive. But recently I've just done a lot of bare bones get through the distance kind of swimming and it's just felt like going through the motions inside of really diving deep and getting into it.
For some reason today was different. It was weird because I woke up pretty minimally motivated to go to practice. Distance days in short course sort of suck, that's just how it goes, and it was early and I was tired and the list of complaints I had really just goes on and on and on and on. I was pretty mellow during warm up and the pre-set, but pretty much as soon as we hit the push off for the first 500 of the main set, it was like a switch flipped and I just sort of attacked it.
I feel like a couple things went into that. The other lane was going on a set of initial intervals that I knew I would've been able to make a year ago (7:30 for the 500, 1:25 for the 100s) and I figured their intervals would get faster as the set went on (I was right, although I don't know the details) and those 100s would have been rough for me if I went for it on that pace, but I guess I was just sort of upset that I knew that I wasn't there right now. I knew I wouldn't have been able to hit those numbers if I was in that other lane and it pissed me off a little bit. I also started like 10 seconds back from when I was supposed to go because we were figuring out lane order, so I had to chase our lead swimmer down, which probably also helped. But the net result was that I went a faster pace than I expected myself to swim (I mean all told it was still pretty slow, I would've wanted/expected to be under 7:00 for the 500s and not once was I under 7:00 today) and it made me feel like I had found myself again. And I was so excited to just do what I do best and I was a little bit cranky about the slightly slow pace times but I tried to see it as an opportunity to just swim faster and beat the pace times by a lot. (Pace time pressure normally helps me, I normally need hard to make pace times to motivate me. Today though, I really really tried to see the pace times as just an indicator of when I had to leave for the next one and not a measure of how fast I was supposed to be going so I tried to clear them by more than the usual 5 or 10 seconds.)
Anyways, in the end I just had a great time pushing the pace, which is how I've always felt about swimming but had sort of lost recently. It was just such a relief to love the feeling of moving through the water a little bit faster than my body really wanted to instead of feeling like it was something I was supposed to be doing that I didn't want to be doing because it hurt. I had such a great time. I feel like today I found the part of me that fell in love with this sport as a kid and never looked back. It all just makes me so happy. I don't know how you can beat that sort of thing in terms of a way to start the day. In any case, here it is:
Today's AM Workout: CSP practice, distance free day
Summary:
- WU: 500 swim
- Pre-set: 2 x
- 100 kick
- 4 x 50 free @ :50
- 100 IM
- 4 x 25 free @ :25
- Main Set:
- 500 free @ 8:00 (~7:10)
- 5 x 100 free @ 1:35
- 500 free @ 7:30 (~7:10-7:15)
- 10 x 50 free
- 1-3 @ :55
- 4-5 @ :45
- 6-8 @ :55
- 9-10 @ :45
- 500 free AFAP (~7:02)
- WD: 100 easy
- Total distance: 4100 SCY
The real question now is, is the magic going to stay? And the answer is probably not. There are always better days and worse days. But I think this is the kind of day that's good to look back on when there are worse days because you always have to get through a number of those to get to a great one like today. I'm excited. I want to feel like this every time I hit the water ever again for the rest of my life. I can't expect or guarantee that, but I'm gonna stick with it and hopefully the universe will bless me with some more in the upcoming days/weeks/months.
Trainer ride in the books for after class today, short 60 minute spin with what will hopefully be some good high intensity work. It's gonna be a late day, thus the short ride, but I'm doing my best to get what needs to be done done within the constraints of my schedule. Okay time to go to more class!
Much love,
Jess
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