Ratcheting up

The pool was empty this morning thanks to the abrupt end of our heatwave. As I walked down to the club, the masters coach walked by and said, "it's all yours" and sure enough it was empty. Understandably, too, the freakin' place was cold, wet and foggy. If it had been a bit darker, it would have been spooky too. I'm wondering how I'm going to handle winter.

Today was good though. I minimized my breaks and swam hard through the whole session, really concentrating on kicking. I also tinkered more with my breathing and am getting comfortable with my technique. I think that's going to be key to the non-stop issue, plus I probably need to throttle back a bit on my pace but I'm not sure how to do that. Whatever, I'll get there, I can tell.

Right now I'm like that annoying guy on the freeway, who speeds up, passes you on the right, gets caught in traffic, has to slow down, switches two lanes to end up behind you again, speeds up, passes on the right, gets caught in traffic and never actually gets anywhere despite all of the machinations. Since I don't know how to pace myself, I'm wearing myself out. But, I'm still learning.

I increased my laps to 24 and am going to keep at that for this week before considering increasing it again. My favorite lap used to be #15 because I was almost done...when I got there today, I thought, "crap, NINE more?!?"

On the plus side, I did a fast 50 in the middle (I think laps 13 and 14) and did it in 49 seconds, 4 seconds off my previous time. When I can get that down to 40, I'm going to challenge CK to a race mano a nina. I'm scared what her time will be at that point but at least I'll have my cheater suit to help out.