Swim Workouts

For as long as I've been swimming, I always have a difficult time coming up with interesting, fun workouts, for me, to do on my own. Create a workout for someone else, NOT PROBLEM! I've coached enough people in the water to know what it takes to make a good workout and have been swimming long enough to know what's boring, what's beneficial, what's interesting, but come up with something for me and it's a completely different story. I can go to the pool and put in the yards/meters, etc, but it's always hard for me to come up with something purposeful for myself. So I'm making an effort in the next few weeks to come up with purposeful, maybe not super creative, but beneficial, pool workouts for myself.

Here's a few I've done:
(you choose your own intervals)

600 warm up

2x 5x50 descend stroke count and time RI :10

2 x 200 2nd one faster than the first RI :10

4 x 100 descend 1-4

8 x 50 best effort

400 cruise PBB

300 warm down/3000 meters

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1000 warm up

500 t-pace minus :05

400 t-pace minus :05

300 t-pace minus :05

200 t-pace minus :05

100 t-pace minus :05

2 x 300 Negative Split RI :15

400 PBB/3500meters

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1000 warm up

10 x 75 KDS

1 x 400 RI :10

2 x 300 RI :10

3 x 200 RI: 05

4 x 100 RI :05

250 warm down/4000 yards

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and to show you how NOT creative I am for myself (I blame Jerry Foley for all his 8, 6, 4, 2's) yesterday's easy swim consisted of:

1000 swim

5 x 100 t-pace minus :05

1000 breathing 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 by 50

5 x 100 PBB/3000 meters

Happy Swimming

Come Sail Away

Some people were sailing, some people were sailing away and some people were....seasick (me).
All-in-all a great Saturday night with the BOCA crew.

On Saturday we got the opportunity to go on a sunset sail on the North Shore with the BOCA coaches and staff. What a cool experience, minus the seasickness...still totally worth it. Thanks Raul!

"We" caught a mahi, saw a shark (that's the closest I've ever been to a shark, in real life (and I'm sticking to that fact even though Aaron qualified that statement with, "that you know of"), saw at least twenty whales, with some full breaching (within a couple hundred yards of the boat at times) and flipper waving, had a gorgeous sunset and most importantly got to spend time with great friends.

The evening in a few pictures....

Pre SeaSickness

starting to not feel well

not a good one, but the start of seeing the breaching whales 

Thanks RR for the sunset pic, as I was incapacitated at the time

There will likely be a sweet GoPro video created and uploaded by TeamRael, once it's up I'll try to get the link and share, it'll be much better than these pictures.

Castle to Hanauma

We've had an unseasonably wet winter here in Hawai'i. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's not the same as the cold, deep freeze everyone has been experiencing on the mainland, but here, it's been wet and dare I say cold without getting flack.

Anyways, yesterday was the annual Castle to Hanauma Time Trial and I got convinced into signing up on a couple days beforehand. Aaron, Michelle Gary and I had a little wager on this event. Gary and I on one team, Michelle and Aaron, the other. We would add up our combined times and the losers had to cook dinner for the winners. Long story short Gary and I lost....looks like a good dinner though, yeah?

Back to the race...first Time Trial I've ever done...as soon as I finished, I was convinced I was NEVER going to do one of these races again. But after giving it some thought here are 10 things I decided/learned:

#1...You should warm up before they start..and you should warm up a lot...I should have brought my own trainer and rode on it for more than 3 minutes and a 2-3 minute jog...lesson learned
#2...Time Trails are time to go fast, don't look at the people taking pictures on the side of the road and smile and wave
#3...Trust the bike holders at the start..they won't drop you, even if they are wearing heels! Thanks Marcy!
#4...Bike races are HARD...no question about that, I would have liked swimming before and running after...a cyclist I am not...I'm working on it
#5...Stay off the white lines when it's wet out and you are going fast
#6...I can't see myself enjoying a flat, fast race. But I suppose that's how you get better, doing things that push you and take you out of your comfort zone...maybe Makaha next year??
#7...I would love to do this race again on a nice, normal, sunny, warm Hawaii day
#8...Starting later in the race > starting at the beginning
#9...Putting a friendly (dinner cooking) wager on races with friends is always fun
#10...What a well organized, safe, controlled, fun, race (thanks BOCA Team!) on what turned out being a wet, soggy, miserable day

and one more for good measure

#11...I will be doing another TT in the future, not sure when or where, but it was kind of fun in a miserable way.

Photo Credit: Sau Hsu

the aftermath

the finish

Next up....Lavaman

P.S. Happy Girls Day!