Today was another fantastically sunny day for a swim! There were about 6 of us in the pool doing the workout today, and it turned out to be a pretty long one… well at least as close to distance freestyle as we get anyways. We managed about 3400 yards in our hour which included 5 minutes wasted on deck wondering who was going to get in first (me!) and another 5 minutes in the water coming up with a workout while mercilessly making fun of each other for various reasons… me, I was getting picked on for today’s Facebook status…

Say whatever you want, that was an awesome dream! Some of the other kids enjoyed the idea but had a hard time imagining it so I went ahead and sketched it out to help those of you that can’t quite put it together visually….

So if you ever wondered what I do at work all day, there you go.

Anyways, here’s today’s workout:

200 swim
200 kick
200 pull

300 free
2 x 250 free
3 x 200 free
4 x 150 free
5 x 100 free
5 x 50 free

3400 yards total

Tonight I have a board meeting for SPMA to attend to, should be good. We’ve been getting stuff done and it’s time to figure out what’s next. As always, if you’re a Masters Swimmer in SoCal with ideas on how to make our LMSC better I’m all ears! Just shoot me an email and let me know what you’re thinking.

So uh, today kinda hurt… I’m going to just get that out of the way in advance here. There was some mild shit talking on Facebook earlier today that I may have been involved in that turned into a harder than usual noon workout. I was greeted on deck with an “oh good you’re here because I wrote the workout just for you!” Uh oh. I’m not complaining (now that I’m done), but wow… good reminder of how much more shape I could be in if I had the time!

On paper it doesn’t look anywhere as hard as it was in real life. But believe me that we were all huffing and puffing at the end of each repeat and most of us were wishing for a swift and silent death.

600 continuous alternating 100 IM/100 free
400 pull alt fast/easy by 50
200 kick alt fast/easy by 25

Repeat x 3
4 x 25 fly @ :30
2 x 50 back @ :50
2 x 50 breast @ 1:00
100 free fast!
minute rest/gasp/complain

12 x 50 free @ :50 (1. easy 2. fast/easy 3. fast repeat)

3000 yards total

I managed to play with a new camera during the kicking portion of the warm up and the pics in this post are from that. It’s an UltraHD FlipCam set in a waterproof case. So far I’m pretty impressed with the image quality and that you can actually get some intelligible sound through the waterproof case. It’s not as easy to play with while swimming as my Pentax Optio W80, but I think this might way outshine that camera for taking video from a stationary or slowly moving vantage point… we’ll see… I need a few weeks to play with this thing before I decide how much I like it. So for your enjoyment… random screen capped pictures!

I had an unreasonably gorgeous day for a swim in Santa Maria today, it was one of those where no one wanted to get in the pool because we just wanted to lay out on the deck and soak up the sun. After about 15 minutes of talking and avoiding doing work we all got in and did a modified version of a workout from a few months back.

400 reverse IM, kick/drill/kick/swim

2 x 200 kick @ 4:00
2 x 200 free IM @ 3:30

2 x 150 kick @ 3:00
2 x 150 IM (no fly) @ 2:30

2 x 100 kick @ 2:00
2 x 100 IM @ 1:45

2200 yards

So… we didn’t get to far today, but we had fun so I guess that counts for something :) Today was probably my last workout before I head north for the Rinconada Masters meet on Saturday. Online entry closed today, but it looks like deck entry will be available. I’m swimming the 50/100/200 free and the 50 fly. I’m really curious to see how the 2 novice events go… I’ve never seen that before in a meet. The other thing that is way beyond me is the concept of a 1650 YARD FLY! Holy crap! Who does that? For those of you capable of such a feat, I salute you!

Since I’ve never been to this pool I had to do my pool recon via Google Maps. It looks like we have 14 lanes and it’s at least deep on one end judging by the diving boards.

I’m excited about having some deep water for my 100 free. I swam a really good time for me at the Fullerton meet last month and I feel like I could have swam it faster if it weren’t for the part where I had to totally change my dive to compensate for the 4 foot deepness of the pool! This meet will also hopefully be redemption for my 200 free. I swam a best time at Rose Bowl in the rain, but I gassed out hard in the process. Like embarrassingly hard, admittedly it was after swimming a 500 and a 1000 free… but still… it was pretty weak. I’d like to see what I can do here when I’m not totally exhausted! Anybody else planning on being there?

if you have a cat, you have to buy this... just saying... click the picture for more

So what does a cat dressed as a shark have to do with anything? Well nothing, it just makes me happy :) Anyways, moving on to what was actually going on today… I got in a solid 3k with my Santa Maria masters friends. We started with just 2 of us but finished with about 6. It’s still a little windy and chilly (California chilly not real chilly) out here, but the sun was out and shining so while you were in the water it felt like a nice summer day. On the deck it wasn’t quite the same sensation!

Repeat x 4
200 swim @ 3:20
100 IM @ 1:40
50 drill (IM order)
100 kick

Repeat x 4
150 free
100 free
50 free

3000 yards total

In other news… I’m going to be doing some videos for USMS and blueseventy during the course of the summer. While I’m traveling around the country I’ll be on the look out for interesting people and fun teams to drop in with! I’m not exactly sure when all of this is going to get going, but when I start putting stuff out there I’ll let you guys know all about it!