Personal Victories

Turns out that this morning was the coldest Perth morning for 2018. Down around 4 degrees apparently. Lovely. Perfect weather for swimming. As it turns out though, the swim was actually pretty good this morning.

As I have been doing for the last few Fridays, this morning I was swimming rather than coaching. On top of the swimming, for some reason I was also leading a group today which meant no draft for me. Fun stuff.

The swim today was a bit of an old school classic, 20 x 100m. One of those sessions that seems easy on paper, but a bit harder in execution. The turn around times for the 100s was pretty generous, which meant a bit of rest, but the flip side was that they were meant to be done rather sprightly. Always a trade off.

I was nicely surprised at how the 20 x 100m went though. They got rather uncomfortable by the end and I had serious doubts about the last 5, but in the end I got through the set in one piece. The bit that was the nice surprise was that I was able to hold between 1:20 and 1:22 for all of the 100s. Not as quick as I was, but not so slow as to be embarrassing. In fact I am pretty proud of those times given that I am only swimming once per week.

As I have written before I am constantly surprised by how the swimming is going. When I jumped back in the pool I full expected it to be uncomfortable and slow, but the reality has been far from that. It can definitely be uncomfortable and I am nowhere near as fit as I was, but I have to say I have been happy with how the speed has been coming back. I suspect I would need to swim more than once per week to see many improvements in speed from where I am now, but I am at the point now that if I just kept swimming like this then I think I would call myself fairly satisfied.

It might seem like a small thing, but being able to continue swimming in a way that is personally satisfying is actually kind of a big deal for me. It is a victory I am more than happy to take.

On a different note, T-minus 34 hours (give or take) until Cairns Ironman time. I am just a little bit excited. Going to be a big day of spectating.