Beaverdam 5280 swim

Saturday was the first open water race of the year, the Beaverdam 5280 1 mi race. The water was a nippley 63 degrees. Most people wore wetsuits, but not DAMA! We were among a handful of swimmers who swam naked (aka no wetsuit) but we put up a fine showing - I was the overall winner, Derek Parr was 3rd overall male, Dawn Franklin was 2nd in the 40-44 age group, and Jason Mask was 3rd in the 30-34 age group. Well done!

Dawn picking up her award



After the 1st turn buoy I took a little unintended detour. To put things mildly, my sense of direction is not the best (I used my GPS to get to work for the 1st 6 months of my new job). After I passed the first turn, I simply couldn't remember where the next buoy was. After looking around for a few seconds, I put my head down and just started to swim. I went in the right general direction, but overshot the next buoy by quite a bit - by the time I got there the lead pack had passed me by about 200 ft. I had to work very hard the rest of the race to catch back up! After the race, the first male swimmer said that he had thought about drafting off of me to the finish but didn't quite trust my navigational skills so he went at it on his own.
Lesson learned: a few minutes studying the course before a race is time well spent if you are a navigational bonehead.






















(Yes, it is rather difficult to get lost on a rectangular course. I'm just THAT talented).

I wasn't sure I would be able to make it through my long swim the next day, but I hobbled through it. 15,000 yds is the longest practice swim I have ever done and this was the workout:

15 x 100 on 1:30 (1500)

3 x 500 descend on 7:30 (3000)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (4000)

4 x 400 on 6:00 (5600)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (6600)

4 x 300 descend on 4:30 (7800)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (8800)

4 x 200 on 3:00 (9600)

10 x 100 on 1:30 (10600)

4 x 100 descend on 1:30 (11,000)

Big Set of Doom (rest 15 sec after each swim)

25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 300 275 250 225 200 175 150 125 100 75 50 25 (14,600)

400 cool down (15,000)

This set was done continuously on a 1:30 pace, with no stopping between sets so it took exactly 3hr 45 min. I've been doing variations of this for my past few long swims. On good days I'll hold a 1:15 pace through the workout, but when I'm tired I'll hold a 1:18-1:20 pace (yesterday was one of those days).

I'm starting to get very bored with this set. If any of you fellow swimmers have any long swim sets that you would like to send my way, I would be very appreciative. Here are my criteria:

- I like to swim a variety of distances during the workout

- In the interest of time, the workout has to be pretty continuous (without much stopping between sets) and all freestyle to almost all freestyle. Also no kicking, sculling, etc.

Week 15:

Mon: swim 4100 yds
Tues: swim 5000
Wed: swim 4500, 40 min abs
Thurs: swim 4600
Fri: rest
Sat: swim about 2800, including race
Sun: swim 15,000 yds

Total: swim 36,000 yds, 40 min abs