It's 7:40 in the morning and the day is already behind schedule. You see, the Princess has Spanish preschool at 9:30 am, I have a roughly 90 minute workout schedule (travel time and shower included) ahead of me, and they haven't even eaten breakfast yet.
Throw in that both of them have noses running at an alarming rate (at least for anyone who shares childcare facilities with them) and there is quite a decision to make. You see, I'm leaving for Thailand (yeah, not helpful) on Saturday night and I need no excuses not to work out. I've run through the "getting all of the workouts in" scenarios in my head and, needless to say, taking a day off to wipe runny noses was not in the plan.
Having convinced myself that they aren't sick, only waking up, I pack the car and, around 8, hit the road. I'm to the pool by about 8:15 and, after the obligatory poolside wait for a lane to open, I'm in the pool around 8:30.
1300yd Fartlek Intervals
The nice part about doing a Fartlek set is that it might actually finish in a reasonable period of time. As opposed to a "one hour" bike set, which cannot be hurried no matter how you slice it, swimming hard through an interval workout means that I am a bit in control of my own time (sort of).
The flipside risk is that form goes all to @$%$ -- it's amazing when I feel like I am putting in maximum effort versus when I relax and really focus on my form. Long story short? They result in basically the same level of performance. Which is exactly why today I focused on form and found myself at a pretty good pace.
300 yards in the Fartlek intervals commenced. The length of each interval is increasing over time (this is the third week), but the intensity still allows for me to grow into my stroke. At the moment they are 150yds long, alternating 50 easy with 25 hard. Out of curiosity, I counted my strokes on the easy set versus the hard sets -- similar to what I had thought, I was only saving two strokes per length, but yet the hard sets were causing me to gulp for air. So, with about four of the six interval sets left, I tried to maintain form during the hard lengths as well. Lo and behold, I was suddenly moving and moving well. Sure, as we closed in on the final couple of sets I was losing steam, but I've got time to build endurance -- this was about confidence.
A quick 100yd cooldown, picked up the kids, and made it to "la escuela" by 9:35. All told a good morning -- I'm ready for that 2000yd swim on Saturday and the rest of my swim season.
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