Amazing when your spine actually works

I'm not sure what happened, there was no great meaty thunk, but over the last little while my spine has cut back on cranky, and got more in the cooperation groove. I am loving it.

So Monday I had a very nice swim I told you about. Tuesday I was champing at the bit to go for a run. 4 K, 28:36, mostly nice and relaxed, trying for quicker turnover.

My overall pace was a bit shaky but the averages are nice. Long warm up and cool down. Good stretch session after.

Wednesday, oh Wednesday swim! I actually wanted to swim Tuesday, so I was keen to get in the water. I'd decided to do another round of CSS and actually pay attention to times and count laps. I am over the moon with happiness on my splits! The short story on my CSS times is that in a short course pool I could do 1:50 till the cows came home. Then I tried going just a bit faster and that didn't work out so well. I aimed for 1:45 on 2 minutes, and made 6 x 100 doing about 1:44, and the 7th was over 1:45. I was working all of them, and needed every second of the 15 seconds or so rest.

So today I decided to have another go, after some really good swims in the 50 m pool. It was short course, and I was getting in after a swim club warmed up the water. The first one was 1:39, then I settled into a 1:42 or 1:43 per 100 pace, on 2 minutes. I'd hoped to get to 10, and got to 15x100. 15!! Nice and easy, I could feel my breathing but I wasn't gasping, and I was never short of air. I could have kept going, but I got to thinking about a work meeting first thing.

What was different? I'm not sure. I think my spine cooperating again helped my turns. My kick was better, and my body position was a little better. The continuously breathing out thing makes no sense to me at all, but people that swim faster than may say it works, so I was trying. Let's call it a work in progress. 

I was thinking about stroke, and trying for a bit of a faster turnover. I think rather than 38 per 50 m, I was doing about 41 or so. The only one I really counted was a golf trial. 50 m, 41 seconds, 43 strokes, strong but nowhere close to all out. I wasn't trying to swim fast, I was trying to turn my arms over faster.

So as you can imagine, I'm pretty pleased. 

Yoga tonight. A cooperating spine makes that ever so much better. I can touch my toes again. Yay me! If I don't celebrate my little triumphs, who else will? 

On the way to yoga we dropped in at the Canstruction at Southcentre mall. Very cool. I can imagine it took a steady hand to build some of these. Here's a couple of my favourites.