View Workout (Lowell Gould)
White Lake HIM Swim
May 2, 2009 (Morning)
Exercise Type: Swim
Weather: Low 60s, Cloudy, mild chop
Comments:
1.2 mile (2112 yard) swim. The plan was:
1:45/100 to the first turn
1:40/100 to the second turn
1:40/100 or faster to the finish.
The first third was downright leasurely. It felt great. I'm not even sure if there was anyone else in the water with me :) I focused on form and sighting at regular intervals. The sighting was tough because the goggles fogged up quite a bit.
After the first turn, I felt so good that I decided to pick up the pace a bit. Before, I was giving about 65% effort, but now I wanted to put out about 75%. The water was a bit choppy but nothing too harsh. Now I was really aware of other people in the water with me and I had the opportunity to draft several times, but opted to swim past them. I was starting to get anxious and wanted to swim faster, but I kept saying the new mantra "stick to the plan" in combination with "finish my stroke". That kept me on target. But I was still measuring my progress on how many people I passed. I was counting the number of swim caps from previous waves.
The third leg of the swim is when I really ignored everyone else and focused on my form and effort. I was still feeling good at this point, so I tried to speed up a bit by putting a little more push into the propulsion phase and accentuating the roll just a bit. From the last turn until 50 yards from the exit, I was alternating the two mantras to keep me from going to fast and blowing up. About 50 yards from the first exit ladder is when I noticed a potential bottleneck. There were several swimmers from previous waves and my curent wave about to converge on the ladder. So I really sped up and beat them to the ladder.
The race clock says I did the swim in 36:31, but that includes the run from the ladder to the timing mat (40 seconds?). I predicted a 37 minute swim, so this was right on.