1st Day Back

When the alarm went off this morning, I wondered "What's that?" Taking a week away from training quickly erodes the Pavlovian Workout Response. Ascending the responsiveness scale to just below Alert and Oriented, I swung the legs out of bed and switched on the light. I'd packed the night before (always a good idea) and soon found myself driving across the St. John's Bridge, in the dark, headed for that morning swim.

My lane at Masters boasts a murderer's row of athletes: Michelle, who's swum the Channel (and is planning to pull the yo-yo there, soon), the Catalinas swim (10+ hours straight), and numerous other long distance swims; Greg, whose easygoing manner belies his age-group winning swims at Alcatraz; Curtis, a lanky businessman who swam for Auburn University, I believe, and a I-Shit-You-Not Russian named Vlad who answers to the sobering sobriquet "Parrakeet." Swimming in their lane, I most steadily worry about getting lapped.

Today that worry seemed very real. The workout was nothing special (all distances in meters):

700WU
400 pull descend by 100s
6x150 kick-drill-swim by 50s on 2:30
8x150 on 2:30
200 pull DPS
6x100 on 1:30
200 CD

But not swimming for eight days had me floundering in the water, and Curtis seemed scarily close on those swim 150s.

Still, day one of aiming for those 15,000-17,000 YPW, and I got around 4500 today.