Small victories.

On Thursday I was supposed to travel to New York for a meeting. Thanks to some nasty weather in the northeast, and resulting delayed flights, I cancelled my trip and went to swim practice instead.

So there.

And a good decision it turned out to be: we did a set that we have done many times called "Maintain Distance." First we swim for 5:10 and keep track of our distance. Then we rest for about 30 seconds. Then we swim again, this time for 5:05, and we try to swim as far or further than we did the first time. Then, after 30 more seconds of rest, we swim again, this time for 5 minutes, and try again to beat or maintain our previous distance. The main set for the practice is two rounds of this, with about 3 minutes in between.

I probably do not need to tell you that I did all of this kick. The first round I did kicking on my back with big fins, and the second round I did on my stomach with my little cup-shaped fins and snorkel.

As we were swimming the first round, I remembered that we had done this some time before during my all-kick period. When I got home, I looked in my workout journal and found it: 8 February. Apparently I did not blog that practice, but I see from my journal that on that night I did the first round with big fins and the second with no fins (Lord, help me!). My distances then were:

8 Feburary 2007
ROUND 1: 325 / <350>350 = 1025
[75 easy]
ROUND 2: <225>225 / >>225 = 675

11 October 2007
ROUND 1: <350>350 / 375 = 1075
[75 easy]
ROUND 2: 250 / 275 / 300 = 825

The information for round 2 is not really comparable, since I used different apparatus the two different times, but the info for round 1 is, and seeing a little improvement there is heartening, particularly since the first set of data is from before my surgery and period of laid-up-ness.