One trick to entering a lane is to sit on the edge with your legs dangling in, because the person is going to see that when the turn, if they don't stop they should take the side the want and then you can slip in and get on with your workout.

The other is to wait for them to pause at the end and simply ask to share. Both work.

@girlswithcurls2 - odd...I always prefer an empty lane to sharing.

girlwithcurls2 wrote: »

The problem is that if I had gone bombing up the center of the lane and she had come down one side, we would have collided. It wouldn't have taken anything off her swim to wait and ask, "Can we split?" I'm not sure at all why she didn't take the empty lane next to me, lol.

Yeah, I always get excited when I get my own lane, lol.

4 miles yesterday.
1000 years warm up
3 sets of 2x50 sprints with 500 paced after each set,
2x100 sprint to finish the first 3000.
3000 paced
50 sprint to finish the 4 miles.

@fishgutzy "Active calories" is a term the Apple Watch 2 is using. They figure that there are rest calories--calories you burn if you are just sitting at a computer--and active calories--the calories you expend from exercising. So for a 670 active calorie swim of 90 minutes, I probably had something like 850 total calories burnt, 180 of those total calories were rest calories.

This is one of the nice things about wearing a watch that continuously measures your heart rate. If I am pushing, I will score a lot more active calories, but when I am just cruising, I do not. I think it is probably a lot more accurate than the various calculators that are out there.

Saturday I was back in the suburbs swimming for my coach. First a review in the pool of what I have been working on the last two weeks--breathing--and then most of the time I was swimming in the tank and then finishing up in the pool.

A tank is great because it lets your coach stand next to you as you swim and see what you are doing from multiple camera angles, but it is a pain to swim in because there is a lot more turbulence than in the pool.

Swimming the first review 25 in the pool, my coach says "your breathing is 1000% better, but..." so mission accomplished on breathing, which is still not everything it needs to be, but is better. When I can swim a fast 100 or 200 and then continue into active recovery with no break and feel my heart rate come back down to something reasonable, I will know I am there with my breathing. I am still using up too much energy to breath, but it is getting better.

Improving my breathing is literally transformative for my swimming. When I am breathing poorly, my feet sink and my leading hand drops when I take a breath. This causes a lot of drag and I expend a lot of energy to push myself back up to the surface.

When I do better with my breathing, like in that first 25 on Saturday, I feel myself gliding through the water at a speed that is unusual for me, and I really am not working that hard yet since it was the first 25.

The bad news is that everything else fell apart, which is to be expected. I was too narrow with the hands up front, too wide with the hands underwater and my kick was overlarge. These are all things I have worked on before that I will work on this week. Because I was thinking about my arms and my kick during the training session, I picked up an old hitch at the front of my stroke. My coach told me what she has told me at least 100 times before (always very nicely): "go more flow-y".

My coach and I have a number of made-up words we use, which works for us because we are both visual learners: "over the mountain", "Annie get your gun", "beach balls", "funky chicken", "more flow-y" or "no catch-up-y" means the stroke, "more flow-y kick" I hear also and "more pop" (your elbow). For me, "left" and "right" do not compute underwater, as strange as that may sound. "Watch" and "no watch" works great for my twisted brain because I can see my arms and I can see where my watch is. It also works great for video review because you don't have to figure out if the image is reversed or not. Do you do anything strange with naming what you are doing in your swimming?

Since we stop and talk after every 25 or every short swim in the tank, the yardage is short on these 60 minute sessions. Active calories were just 360.

Today I tried a new pool--25 meters instead of 25 yards--and I swam without my cap and without the snorkel I use for warm-up and some drills. Pushed harder and did 4,000 meters, 90 minutes, 765 active calories.

2200 uninspired metres. Been feeling super tired.

300 warmup

100 kick

3x 200 free descending on 4.00
(2.58 2.56 2.50)

100 kick

6x 100 free descending 1-3 4-6 on 2.30
1.23 1.21 1.19 1.24 1.23 1.18

100 kick

8x 25 as 2 fly 2 back 2 br 2 free on 40

200 warmdown

3000 @ 60 minutes

2000m - short and, er, not sweet!

400 warmup

6x 100 br kick on 2.30 (yuck as takes me 2.00!)

100 swim

12x 50 on 1.15 as
4 fly/back
4 back/br
4 br/free
This was harder than it looked as all 50s had to be done with good effort. Lots of puffing!!

100 kick

200 warmdown

Just managed to get in abotu 55 minutes today-- first time this week. It's been a week of Mondays.