There she slows!

Saturday was the Chris Greene Lake 2 mi cable swim, in Charlottesville, VA. The course is four, half mile loops around a floating cable. (I know, pretty lame for an open water swim. Cable swims are a lot like swimming laps in a pool, only with 100+ racing people in your lane. Also the turns are trickier - buoy turns instead of flip turns). Every other year, this race is the USMS national championships, so it generally is a fast race.
I entered myself with a fast mile seed time because I wanted to be sure to start in the first wave. This way, I would know where all the faster swimmers were right from the start. However, this plan backfired somewhat. The lead swimmers in my wave took off faster than I could say "sprinters!". Unable to hang with the lead pack, I fell further behind. I had no one to draft off of during the race, a disadvantage during a cable swim.

My mom ended up winning her age group, despite recovering from a displaced elbow. I won my age group and placed 2nd out of the women, the same as I had placed last year. However, my time was over a minute slower! This has been a theme for me this year - swimming slightly slower in races than the year before. And in a lake cable swim, there are no currents or directional challenges I could blame it on!

Of course, Yogi was still impressed and awarded us with many wet kisses.



It seems that all my extra swimming for channel preparation is not making me any faster, at least in shorter races. You don't have to be fast to swim the English Channel - crossing times range from 7 hrs and change to over 17 hrs - but it certainly helps. Swimming 5 seconds faster per hundred yards would save you 34 minutes over the course of 23 miles. That's 34 fewer minutes in the icy cold! That's also 34 fewer minutes to get to much earned beer and chocolate.

So, for the next 6 months, I'm going to change my focus a bit. My new plan is to hold steady at 32-38,000 yds a week and not increase my weekly totals any further until January. I also will keep my long swims down to 10,000-12,000 yards, which psychologically and physically are much easier than super long swims. In exchange, I will be swimming harder, faster sets to get my base speed back down. That means less junk yardage - easy, slow swimming that has made up the bulk of my yardage base. If a set is too slow or easy, I will try to modify it to make it more productive.

Week 27:
Mon: swim 4800 yds, 1 hr kickboxing, run 3 mi
Tues: swim 5400, 1 hr boxing, run 3 mi
Wed: swim 5400, 1 hr kickboxing, run 3 mi
Thurs: swim 5800, 1 hr boxing
Fri: walk/run 4.5 mi
Sat: swim 5,000, walk 2.5 mi
Sun: swim 10,000 walk, 1 hr boxing, run 3 mi
Total: swim 36,400 yds, 5 hr boxing/kickboxing, walk/run 19 mi