Today was a great day!

Preface: I had to play last night at Chris’ Jazz Cafe in Downtown Philadelphia last night and did not get home until about 1:30am.  I then had to get up early to teach this morning at Temple University, so I didn’t think my training would be very productive today.  Well, I took a nice long nap this afternoon (very rare) and hit the pool first.

I started out with a warm-up.  My goal was to repeat my routine from last swim training session and bang out 12 sets of 4 laps, taking necessary breaks between each set. I got to the gym at 7:10, so I had 50 minutes to achieve my goal before the gym closed.  I was lucky enough to get an open lane immediately upon getting to the pool, so I jumped in and stretched a bit and started my warm-up.

Now, initially my warm-up was intended to be 4 laps, but after reaching lap 4, I felt pretty good and decided to make it 10 laps.  At around lap #8, I started thinking about my last milestone of 9 laps straight and decided to try to beat it by 3 laps for a total of 12 laps without stopping.  I thought that that would be a nice improvement.

So I swam 12 laps.  It was on this last lap that I started to become very focused mentally and started daydreaming about making 20 laps non-stop.  I felt good and I was starting to find a rhythm, so I just kept swimming.  I figured that I had made it this far so why not try to push myself to make 20 laps without any rests.  That would be half the distance of what I need to accomplish for the race.

I remained relaxed and focused on my form.

Now somewhere between laps 12 and 20 I starting think about how I barely make 9 laps non-stop (last week) and swimming 20 laps non-stop comfortably was such a huge improvement.  I starting to find this rhythm in my swim that I had not experienced as of yet.  I was relaxed in my breathing and not only was I really focused on maintaining my stroke and technique, but I had fallen into a really deep state of thought. Today I felt really strong for some reason.

So I swam 20 laps, but around lap #16, I started to daydream about making 24 laps.  And so that’s how it went.  I really focused on making small strides in my swim.  I knew if I had started out with the intention of doing 40 laps without stopping, I would never make it, essentially psyching myself out before ever giving myself a chance.  My accomplishments were 90% mental today.

For every mini-goal I set for myself on the fly as I was swimming my “warm-up”, I pushed myself further. At lap #24, I felt strong and focused, so I pushed my goal to 30 laps non-stop.  At lap #28, I pushed my goal to 32 laps.  Then 36 laps.  At this point I almost faultered as I was finally starting to get tired, feeling the effects in my technique which started to get sloppy.  I began to tell myself “2 more laps and I’m done”, but I regained my composure, maintained mental focus on my technique and set my new goal to 40 laps. At lap #40, I had a little bit left in me but had reached my distance goal I had anticipated reaching 3 weeks from now.

And so I stopped swimming at 40 laps.  40 LAPS!  NONSTOP!  SUCCESS!  Success 3 weeks ahead of schedule.  This completely changes everything.  I was a little worried about being able to make the swim distance.  That is such an amazing improvement - about 350% since May 28th.  I am so surprised.

My new goal: 70 laps, non-stop by June 25.  That will be 1 mile of swimming.  Wish me luck!

I then drove home (30 minutes) and ran 5 miles, beating my most recent distance of 4 miles from 4 days ago and my last time of 4 miles in 41 minutes.  My new running goal is 3 miles in 20 minutes.

Swim: 40 laps, non-stop in 26.75 min.

Run: 5 miles in 48.5 min.