:56 and :57

I made it to EMU to practice today. I had a brief conversation with Coach Peter Linn. I informed him that I would be training alone again due to the Athletic Department's unwillingness to work with us both on the issue of me training with the team. I'm not thrilled that once again, I'm on my own in the pool, but I'll make the best of it. Training with EMU was not what I had envisioned. Rather than training WITH the team, due to some misinterpreted rules, my only option was to train in the last lane. Each day it was at least 10 lanes away from the sprint group whom I was sharing my practice with. I was swimming in the most shallow part of Easterns pool. Certainly not ideal.

If I can look at the bright side, today I came in on my own time, on my own schedule, trained in 8 foot deep water and had the pool all to myself! I feel as though I'm approaching the type of training I was doing in 2007 which yielded some great times for me. On Saturday I began a benchmark set of 3 x 100's descend. It's not much of a set really:

I swim 100 yards backstroke three times on the 2 minute interval. I begin at a normal pace of ~1:10 for the first one. The second is typically 1:04 and the last one I swim all out, as fast as I can go. It's a great final set to work back up to swimming multiple 100's in a row fast, which I'm not ready for yet.

Saturday Splits:
1:10
1:05
:56

Monday Splits:
1:08
1:03
:57

All the swims are from a push. It was this exact set which yeilded a :50.2 on the last swim just two years ago. I really want to get back to that...