I started my workout today with the intention of hitting 40 laps swimming tonight.  I tried waking up early again, but I had to play (music) last night and didn’t get home until 12:30am, so waking up to swim, run, and/or bike at 6am and then work 8 and 1/2 hours was out of the question.  I was a little worried that I wouldn’t hit my goal since working out after work hasn’t been as productive as I’d hoped.

So I did what I could to pace myself.  I started out with 4x25m (or yards?) sets and eventually found my rhythm at 3x25 sets, with 1-2 minutes rest between each set.  I set my goal at 40 laps and actually surpassed to 46 laps!  Nice!

Swim: 46 x 25m/y at 48.5 minutes = a little over 1 min/lap.

Not great, but I’m not putting too much emphasis on time at this point - just distance and endurance.

I then banged out 10 miles on the bike at a pace that was a little slower than I’d hoped.

Bike: 10 miles at 35 minutes.

The issue here is pool length at LA fitness.  I’ve asked numerous employees at the gym about the official length of the pool and I get 25 meters half of the time and 25 yards the other half of the time… This makes it difficult to prepare for the correct distance:

Philadelphia Sprint Triathlon has a swim distance of 0.9K, which is a little longer than most swims for a sprint triathlon.

0.9 K = 900 meters = 984.25 yards

900 meters / 25 meters (possible length of pool) = 36 laps

985 yards / 25 yards (other possible length of pool) = ~40 laps

So regardless of what length the pool is, I’m shooting for 50 laps, non-stop by June 22.  That should be enough preparation to get through the swim portion of the race easily without using all of my energy.  Another thought is to shoot a little higher (60-70 laps), as half of the swim leg of the race needs to be swum up-stream.  We’ll see how rapidy I progress at this swimming thing.