Spin & Swim

Last night's spin class was evil. Eveeel!

The not so evil portion consisted of:
10 min warm up

Isolated leg drills

Cadence build - 30 sec at 80, 85, 90, 95, 100, a break and then repeat

Then it got bad:

3 X 30 sec at 100, 30 at 110, 30 at 120 on a 3min recovery

Hard gear and high cadence - I can't remember what the drill was called but I'm sure it was something along the lines of "The Lose Yer Lunch Drill".

According to Alan the goal for this was to hit our max heart rate within 90 seconds, go cross-eyed, forget our name and, as noted above, lose our lunch.

I couldn't do this in the big bracket nor could I do a cadence of 120 - I wavered between 100-110. I did, however, have difficulty holding onto my lunch so obviously I was doing something right.

This morning's swim was much more civil. Partway through the main set Paul hauled me out on deck to work on my body positioning and pull. According to him I'm putting all my effort into the front of the pull and too little at the end.

To fix this I need to:

• Roll more. At the start of the stroke my body should be on an angle and my front arm feeling almost like it's away to the side. Mid-stroke my shoulders should be square to the bottom of the pool and at the finish my body should be rolled the other way.
• Finish the push. I'm stopping before my arm is fully extended and not taking advantage of all the power I can get
• Put my effort into the push in the second half of the stroke rather than my pull at the front. Paul said I'm pulling into my breath rather than pushing into it - that was the imagery that got the eureka lights going!

Working on that felt smooth and required much less effort, although the one arm stroke was harder as I had difficulty balancing in the water. I think I must have used my lats more today as my shoulders have migrated away from their usual nesting place close to my ears. Hopefully this will help the shoulder issues I'm trying to pretend don't exist as well as make me a better swimmer.