Ten days of updates

I've had a great week of practices.  I've found a balance between training and life/work lately which has been really nice after so much focus on training for the past 14 months.  I chose to work more lately and only train once a day for a total of 6 practices a week, down from 10+.  I've done some of my own dryland training simply because I've put more emphasis on work and less on attending scheduled dryland time.  I feel bad about missing practice but it seems like a great time to balance training and life like I have.  I may change back to "doing doubles" by training twice a day again sometime soon.  For now, this is working well for me.

Last Tuesday brought a short course race pace set.  It was very straightforward in it's structure.  I appreciated it for that reason.  It was 6 x 50's on the 10 minute.  It was all about quality.  I had a respectable set, not great, not bad:

50y Fly: 22.9
50y Fly: 22.6
50y Fly: 23.1
50y Fly: 22.7
50y Free: 21.5
50y Back: 23.4

I was racing a butterflier who was 21 seconds on each one, typically around 21.5.  Very quick indeed.  It was great motivation.

On Saturday we had a 100m race pace set long course.  It was pretty simple as well compared to some of the brain busters we've had in the past:

50m Dive Green (swimming the first 50m of a 100m race)  @ :45 
3 x 25m Push Green  @ :30 
Tween
50m Dive Green  @ :45 
2 x 25m Green  @ :30 
Tween
50m Dive Green @ :45
1 x 25m Green @ :30 
Tween
50m Dive Green @ :45 

I swam the entire set butterfly.  I was 25.x to 26.x on all the 50's with the 25's in the 13-15 second range.  I was a 25.7, 26.5, 25.5 and 25.6 on the 50's dive.

Today we swam a single 100y dive for time.  I warmed up for 30 minutes which included some burst swimming.  I chose to swim a 100y fly.  I was racing the 2011 BigTen champion in the event.  I touched the wall in a disapointing 51.30 to his 49.60.  I really expected to be faster than that.  I have some slow turns.  I find it ironic that I actually prefer long course swimming now.