The pain comes first

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday. Why do you harass me so.

Being Wednesday of course means that this morning I was down at Claremont Pool for the my weekly Red Mist pounding. Oh and what a pounding it was.

This week I didn't have any of the motivational battles that I often have before a Red Mist swim. At the moment I know that my fitness needs work and so getting out the door isn't something I am struggling with. Getting myself out the door wasn't hard, but I knew getting through the session was going to be.

I have been back in the routine of swimming on Wednesday morning for a few weeks now. However, I don't recall the previous couple of Red Mist sessions having been all that disastrous. I am sure they can't have been very special, but I don't remember them containing any particularly spectacular explosions or anything. Not so today though.

Today's effort wasn't so much of an explosion, but rather a quiet fading into the night. I was okay for about 3000m of the session. For the final 2000m I was less okay.

The session was an interesting yin and yang type session. We were either swimming long or we were swimming short. It looked a bit like:

400m, 300, 200m, 100m descending
7 x 100m
1000m
4 x 150m
500m
7 x 100m
500m

That 1000m in the middle is about where the wheels started to get a little wobbly for me. The 1000m itself went fine, actually it was pretty good, but it took a lot out of me. Afterwards I found I just didn't have much left to go on with. I persevered and got though, but the last 200m were definitely nothing special. By the final 500m I was down to survival mode, just swimming to get through, rather than chasing any sort of pace.

Still, these are the sessions where it is important to stick with it and do the work, it can't get better without it being hard first. The more work I do now, the better the end result will be, it won't necessarily get easier, but I will get quicker. All this I know from previous experiences, which is exactly what kept me in the pool this morning once I hit that wall.

Do the work the rewards will come. Simple as that.