Toronto Triathlon Club Swimming

Warm-up: 100m swim / 100m kick / 50m pull [we abandoned this cause we were all late starting]

50 x 50m w/ fins on 1:00

That's right, 50 sprints in a row. There were three of us valiant souls in my lane, and we totally kicked ass.

Started around 0:42, but soon dropped to 0:43. It took me until at least the mid-teens to settle my breathing down; before that, I sounded like I'd just been pulled from the bottom of the pool.

Fell back to 0:44 here and there, but generally, lap after lap, we held the 0:43. To maintain sanity, I kept cycling through my body parts to make sure they were working correctly: entry, catch, pull, push, roll, reach, fire the hips, and most importantly: breathe out steadily and calm the fk down.

After about 20-25, I was well settled in, and just kept hammering, still on the same pace. Somewhere around then I started to get closer to our fearless leader, and I think I benefited from a bit of a draft. Poor guy always has to work harder up there in the front!

Around 35 or so, I believe I actually lost my marbles, and began to believe that going back and forth was all I had ever done my whole life, and like a hamster on a wheel, am destined to continue going back and forth in the pool for the remainder of my life as well.

Normally people just sprint on the very last one, but to us, the last 5 were already the last ones on this time scale. We were so excited, we started dropping back to 0:42. The penultimate lap for me was 0:41. I think I growled my way into the start of number 50, and pulled off a crushing 0:40 - actually my fastest lap of the whole set.

Cool-down: No. Did not bother. We just sat there and talked for the last few minutes.

This was as much a test of mental endurance as physical stamina. I think we did very well! I think without our Coach present, we had to band together in each lane and get the job done. Awesome.

More awesome was that the one we call Speedy over in the shark-tank lane did the whole workout with his feet tied up with a band, and still rolled everyone else up and smoked us. :)

--Distance: 2,750m
--Duration: 60mins