Taking One for the Team

I am participating in a health and wellness competition at work, and belong to a team which is competing against other teams to be most active. We all get this little thing called a FitBit which measures your steps.  My main concern about the FitBit was that it only tracked your steps (and sleep, which we already know is an issue for me), so I did not want to drag the team down. I quickly learned that my swimming would count toward "active points", so have recently ramped up my swimming. Case in point, today I convinced BB (who now knows about this competition) to swim 4k with me. We were both tired. We were both a little cranky about our times. But he kept me motivated and we finished. The problem with telling him about my new team is that he will hold me accountable. Let's face it, BB likes to win and likes hanging out with winners. I can't let him down. As we left he said "you'll have to get to the pool early on Monday - for the team".


The workout:
200 swim
200 drill/swim by 25
200 IM
200 pull
200 choice
500 going 1,3,5 fast on 7:05
500 going 2,4 fast on 7:05
400 pull on 6:00
300 descend by 100 on 4:30
200 IM on 3:30
100 fast (sub - 1:15)
4 x 125 going:
50 fly, 25 back, 25 breast, 25 free
50 back, 25 br, 25 fr, 25 fly
50 breast, 25 fr, 25 fly, 25 back
50 free, 25 fly, 25 back, 25 br
6 x 75 hypoxic (5-3-5) going:
1-2 on 1:05
3-4 on 1:10
5-6 on 1:15
50 easy

Swim Abacus

It seems only fitting in the epicenter of science, technology, engineering, and math that we use an old school mathematics technique to count our workout. Yep, the abacus, in the form of a lane line. It's astounding in its simplicity. You take a "boring but doable" workout (not my words, coach Bill!) which could easily be shortchanged or extended (usually the former), and we use the abacus to keep us honest. Who said that you can't learn while you swim? That's another benefit to swimming at MIT, besides getting to swim for coach Bill. Just being here makes you smarter.  On another important counting note, our teammate Rachel needs an abacus to count another member of the family - Sarah Marie was born yesterday! A note to the infant/toddler swim instructors: watch out.  This kid was swimming earlier this week and most likely will take the warm pool by storm in a week or so. Congrats!

200 swim
100 count strokes
4 x 25 drill
2 x 50 back
4 x 25 drill
2 x 50 breast
4 x 25 drill
2 x 50 fly
Four times thru:
75 stroke on 1:35
50 on :45
25 kick on :30
Main set: 18 100's
1-9 on 1:25
10-18 on 1:30

Happy weekend everyone!  Special shout out to Suzanne and KC, my loyal readers. :)

Monday Enlightenment

The Dalai Lama is visiting MIT today, evoking feelings of altruism and good karma. Imagine, then, the surprise of many of us who were wrenched out of the pool to hear that our cars were being towed to make room in the parking lot for His Holiness. I clearly was not feeling the karma. But then again, I should have listened to my inner voice at 5:30am when it told me to "sleep, my child, sleep". Instead, I shut out my inner voice and proceeded to slog through getting to the pool, doing a workout with my arms feeling like jelly from the day before, and no hot shower afterward. All in all, it serves me right. I should have slept in! Even the Dalai Lama would agree with me. Now a small bone to pick with Joel - Bill created a workout just for you and you did not show up!  It was all stroke/IM and kicking. In other words, pure torture for me.

150 swim :25r
150 stroke/free by 25 :25r
150 drill/swim by 25 :25r
150 IM no free :25r
150 free
6 x 50 count strokes :50
8 x 50 going:
1-4 stroke :55
5-6 free :45
7 stroke :55
8 free :45
10 x 50
1-4 stroke :55
1-6 free :45
7-10 free descend :40
4 x 3 x 100
all one stroke 1:40
all one stroke 1:45
all one stroke 1:50
IM 1;55

4k for E

While we were busy swimming 4000 yards today, E's magical contraption was hard at work, so was her cat Bishop, who is attentively watching E to make her heal quickly. I particularly like the well-placed kitty bed. Knee surgery is over, now we count the days until her return to swimming. So, E - this one's for you! A good one today, though some parts were less fun than the others. If you know me, you'll know which part that is:



200 swim :25r
2 x 100 stroke/free :20r
100 scull/fist
100 free :20r
100 IM
3 times thru:
3 x 25 kick on :25
25 kick ez on :45
4 x 200 going:
75 fly, 50 free, 25 fly
75 back, 50 free, 25 back
75 breast, 50 free, 25 breast
75 choice, 50 free, 25 choice
5 x 75 on :60
2 x 25 on :30
5 x 75 on 1:05
2 x 25 on :30
5 x 75 on 1:10
2 x 25 on :30
5 x 75 on :60
2 x 25 on :30
4 x 50 free

Sleep or swim?

It was probably a mistake for me to read a new study suggesting that if you have a choice between exercise and sleep, you should choose sleep because the overall benefits to your health are greater than for exercise. Armed with my new found knowledge, I slept right through my alarm yesterday when I had intended to swim. For the record, I did not feel any healthier missing practice. And in a cruel twist of sleep fate, I was up at 4am this morning so there was no excuse. A dreary day out there, but as always, sunshine in the pool!

200 warmup
2 x 25 drill
2 x 25 free
2 x 25 drill
2 x 25 breast
2 x 25 drill
2 x 25 back
2 x 25 drill
2 x 25 fly
5 x 100 free on 1:30
4 x 200 on 3:00 odds hypoxic (7,3,5,5), evens swim
3 x 300 going:
300 - first 100 fast on 4:30
300 - second 100 fast on 4:15
300 - third 100 fast on 4:00
400 on 6:20
400 on 5:40
500 swim

That's 4100, and I will take it!

Monday IS Funday!

I don't usually embrace Mondays, but seeing all my friends at swimming this morning reminded me that Mondays are not so bad.  This was particularly true because I had been hunched over a computer all weekend writing, so every little thing (there's Maggie and Rachel walking in to the pool! There's BB all tan back from Hawaii! Did SB just wink underwater at me during that flip turn?) was magnified. And then we did my favorite workout - 200s. An extra special bonus today was learning that Coach Bill raced the Provincetown swim this weekend!  Yes, our coach did a SWIM this weekend. Fantastic! Now, according to him he suffered quite a bit, but at least he did it and we are so proud. Oh, and don't think Bill wasn't showing off the numbers on his arm, which should wash off easily but apparently not easily enough. :)

200 swim :15r
8 x 50 drill/swim on :60
4 x 75 stroke on 1:30
9 x 200 going
1-3 on 2:50
4-5 on 1:45
6 on 1:30
7-8 on 2:45
9 on 2:50 (with Joe and BB racing)
8 x 75 going:
1-2 on 1:05
3-4 on 1:10
5-6 on 1:15
7-8 on 1:20

Don't look at the paper!

At MIT Masters, we get our workouts on little slips of paper, which we then attach to the wall or to the little yellow standing sign that says "lane closed for masters". We look at the sheet and do the workout.  Sometimes, though, coach Bill puts the little slip of paper on top of the yellow sign before our current set is done, tempting us - daring us - to look at what is ahead.  It is a rare person (Joel?) who looks at the paper before the current set is finished. I do not understand why anyone would want to know what comes next as it would just cause anxiety. For instance, if we are doing a nice, long distance set, it would cause me great stress to know that the next set was 100s hard. Likewise, coach Bill often surprises us with a redux of a set that he gave us earlier in the workout, usually one that is pretty hard and that we did not enjoy. If we looked, half of us would get out of practice.  When you all collectively groan together upon reading the paper, there is a sense that you cannot betray your lanemates by getting out (unless you have announced said departure at the beginning of the workout). I was really hoping to see Maggie today, but she wasn't there.

200 warmup
4 x 25 IM order on :30
4 x 50 IM order on :60
4 x 75 pace on 1:20
4 x 50 free on :60
6 x 100 going:
1:35
1:30
1:30
1:25
1:25
1:15
4 x 150
odds pull hypoxic (7,3,5) on 2:20
evens pull middle 50 stroke on 2:30
6 x 100 going:
1:35
1:30
1:25
1:25
1:20
1:15
4 x 50 fast on :40
2 x 25 easy on :35
4 x 50 fast stroke on :55
2 x 25 easy on :35
4 x 50 fast free on :40
2 x 25 easy on :35
2 x 50 fast free on :40
2 x 25 easy