My wife headed back to work part time this week and as a result I haven't had much of a chance to get down to the pool. That meant that this morning was my first chance to get to the pool deck all week and as a result I was particularly keen to get down there and give Paul a hand with the squad.
As is often the case when I spend time on the pool deck with Paul, it was a fun and educational experience.
The session today was a particularly spicy threshold session, being made up of a whole bunch of 100s. The session contained a few steady 100s followed by a fast one, repeated 5 times. The number of steady 100s decreased each time the set of was repeated, but so did the amount of rest. In the first set the rest was a rather generous 20 seconds per 100, but by the final set it was down to a rather anaemic 4 seconds. Let me tell you, pushing out a fast 100 off 4 seconds of recovery is not an easy task. From the pool deck the painfulness of the session was rather evident.
It wasn't all tea and biscuits on the pool deck though, Paul and I ended up working pretty darn hard too.
The hard work arose because Paul was keen to get times for the every groups fast 100s. Sounds good in principal until you realise that there are four lanes of swimmers and each lane has two groups, so that is 8 different fast 100s to time. Adding to the complication is the fact that the lanes all swim at different speeds and so they are doing their fast 100s at different times. In practice the session ended up being about 40 minutes of flat out timing, running from one lane to the next and one group finished and another begun.
Between the two of us I think we got all the times. If I am honest, I am giving myself too much credit here. Really Paul got 95% of the times and I got a few of the left overs. That gives you a bit of an idea just how impressive it is to watch Paul at work. There were quite literally people starting their 100s continuously and yet somehow Paul managed to be aware of them all and get nearly all their times. I was timing two of the lanes and even then I was only just keeping up.
Part of Paul's magic is the multi-timer stop watch app that he uses so that he can time numerous groups at once. However, to simply put it down to technology would be selling Paul short. I have a multi-timer stop watch too and I was struggling. Paul just has this almost supernatural ability to be aware of what is going on in the squad and the endless energy required to keep up with it. It really is impressive to see.
As I always find when I spend time on the pool deck, today was another educational experience for me. I have been monitoring times in the squad now and then to help out, but this was the first time that I have tried to do it so intensely. It was rather insane. However, by the time I was doing it the second time through for the 6:30 swim squad I was feeling a lot more comfortable with it. Turns out practice really does help with these things. Still, watching Paul at work demonstrates to me that there is still so much more to learn. Which is awesome, because that is exactly why I am there.
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