The goodness of stroke improvement

I was all rested and happy to swim. 3x400, descending. And I did, much to my surprise. I started off feeling heavy and slow in the water during warm up, but being in the same lane as 2 other people swimming faster, and another swimming only slightly slower, had a way of waking me up. By the end of the warm up I was mostly in the groove, or so I thought.

First 400 was pretty good, right about my 1K pace. Then I decided to work on my stroke. Without putting more effort into it, and in fact I wasn't breathing anywhere near as hard at the end, I was 8 seconds faster. For the third I tried to swim well, and put some more muscle into it, and really powered through the flip turns, and took another 8 seconds off. I was pretty pleased by that.

Then more stuff. Meanwhile the guy doing fast intervals, and the fast girl left, so I was chasing the slightly slower swimmer, trying to lap her as often as possible. It worked out pretty good. 70 minute swim.

75 minute run in the evening, up to the reservoir and back, as an even split. Morally it was a negative split because I got caught at the lights on the way back and not on the way up. Ran easy at the bottom of zone 3 for the first half, but the heart rate went up about 4 bpm on the way back to maintain the pace. More uphill, and getting tired.

Tummy and guts were a bit sloshy for the first 2/3rd or so of the run, and there was a time about the 50 minute mark where I had really tired feet and calves, but that passed. However it all settled down and turned into a very nice run. Walked 5 minutes warm up and cool down, and started the run easy, and ended it easy as well.

Into the house, snabbled a peanut butter and nutella sandwich and some milk. Ate it while changing, and was still munching the last mouthful as I got into the shower. I kind of figured the yoga studio didn't want my icky run sweat all over their nice mats and floor. Zoomed over to the studio, where Fiona tried to kill me. My shoulders are really tight; almost anything but swimming is painful or nearly so. Nearly went to sleep in Savasana. Time for real sleep in a real bed.