Swimming with the big dog of the pool

I woke up this morning feeling great. I was all packed for the pool and knew I was going to have a good day. My confidence was shaken a little as I'm going into the shower. There's a guy, never seen him before, in a parachute suit that's just about off his butt. He's been lolling under the shower for who knows how long. He hustles his ass out in front of me and is walking along looking at lanes. It's a fairly busy day in the pool. He picks the fast lane one in from the far side. I know the other two people in that lane and prefer not to swim with them anyways.

Then I notice the big dog in the other fast lane. Zooming back and forth. I know I don't swim that fast. Not even close. There's another lady in that lane that I think is swimming about my speed. It's hard to tell. I watch him for a few minutes to get into the rhythm while I get my googles on and set my watch. Meanwhile buddy in the other lane pushes off. Slowly. Sloppily. Enough of him, I'm glad I'm not in that lane. Back to business at hand in my lane

The big dog doesn't tumble turn all that fast. I watch and push off right on his toes and get started. I'm trying to find the pace that will keep me from getting lapped too often, and yet not burn out in 100 m. I know right from the first strokes that I'm going to have a good swim. If I don't puke. The other girl in the lane stays out of our way. At the end of the first 25 m, I'm well off his toes, and falling behind, even though my first laps are usually my fastest. When I expected to be lapped the first time, he took a break. Surely it wasn't to get caught up on his breathing or to rest. No doubt it was just the workout plan.

We pushed on. After a while I looked at my watch and realized I was on a blistering pace for me. I tried not to think about it. I got lapped a couple times. I didn't mind stopping for a few seconds to let him by; it gave me a few extra breathes. He passed me once at just the perfect time. I pushed off hard and seriously tried to draft. I wasn't going quite all out but it was as hard as I could push and have any hope of continuing on next lap. He still pulled away.

At the end of 1 K, I was thinking about stopping, but then I remembered my run on the weekend. I slowed down at the end, and I now think I didn't really need to. So today I kept going, trying to stay fast. The next 500 m went by pretty quickly, though my stroke was getting a bit sloppy. Just toward the end, the big dog hopped out of the pool, shook himself off, and wandered off to the shower. I kind of figured he was going to finish up because he'd stopped lapping me. His cool down was my pushing hard.

My arms felt really strong, and I was getting a good grip on the water. My legs were still a bit tired, and I wasn't pushing off as hard as I normally do. My kick was nothing special, but then, it never is. My 1 K time was 18:55, and my 1500 m time was 28:40. This is easily the fastest I've done 1500 m since I started this tri stuff. If I've done the math right that's a 1:54/ 100 m pace. Yeehaw!

Did a bit of drill for 15 min in the now empty lane. Did lots of core work in the dive tank, more reps, and going slow. 20 min. So an hour altogether.