The inner shark emerged

Then he was a bit cranky at me. Not because I was swimming slowly. No, he was pretty pleased at the speed today. He was cranky because I wasn't using it to hunt prey.

The problem was that I was the only person in the pool for much of the swim. I don't know what it was calm today, but I'm happy. My only assumption is the swim clubs figured everybody would be hung over and skipped a day. Some football game or other. If I was in charge of scheduling, I'd have put the biggest, toughest workout on Sunday afternoon, with a followup on Monday morning. Both as required attendance.

I think giving advice to the two bad-ass buddies was really good for me, making me think about my stroke. The water felt good right from the start, then I settled in a groove. When I hit 500 m in just over 9 minutes, cruising along, I was pretty pleased. At 750 m I was still going pretty strong, but was thinking trying to go much beyond a K and things would fall apart. I had a slow lap around 800 m then picked it up again.

18:20 for the 1000 m. I was rolling that around in my brain for a bit. That's almost 30 seconds faster for the same distance than a couple weeks ago, where I was really feeling it at the end. This time I could have kept going for a little bit longer, but I'm not sure how much. Rather than find out and remember a swim that went crappy, I'll take an unadulterated win.

I haven't swim that fast since before the 2013 flood. I'd have to go back and see what I was doing then. What's funny is that I wasn't trying to swim fast at all. The first bunch of it I was relaxing and not really thinking of anything, then was surprised by the clock. Then I was thinking about trying to swim clean. By the end I was beginning to run a bit short of air, but my arms still felt strong. It's been the other way around for some time now.

Then 4 x 50 m less than 50 seconds on 60 seconds.
My learning from all this is that I need to concentrate on my form a bit more. There was a bit of clandestine video shot, and I've got a bit of crossover happening again. Thought I'd fixed that, but I guess it has crept back in again.

Now I know I can actually swim at my desired pace for a little while anyway, I need to develop the endurance to keep doing it. I used to be able to do this.

In other news I'm still taking a break from running, and it feels really good. I am beginning to rethink my goal of doing a marathon next summer. Maybe I should try the bike without running.

Day one December streak done! Plank. Squats. Stuff.