The BSC Swim

I'd say I don't really know how it came about that we ended up swimming 100x100's this morning... but really I do know... But I'll blame it on Teresa (it was her birthday) and Scott (it was also his birthday) and Krista (who instigated the birthday swim for them in AZ then posted it on FB)... then somehow even though we are in Hawaii and they are in AZ, we got roped into doing both birthday swims combined ("Double Dog Dare" style 42 + 49)... Then of course I'll blame Nalani again b/c she was like Um, are we really going to do 91 but not an extra 9?? 

So there you go. I'd blame all of them, but I'm the one who wrote the w/o. For the record though, minus all that encouragement, I wouldn't have written the workout. So I'm not really the crazy one in all this. Just sayin'. ;)

Nalani was so excited she had her swim cap on before the pool even opened. Truth be told, she does this every time we go swim so it's not as special as it might appear. What IS special though is that her cap is all Christmasy with snowmen and gingerbread house, etc. So.freaking.festive.

Mark showed up for the first time in several weeks. We laughed b/c he had no idea what he was getting himself into this morning. We didn't even tell him either until we were sitting on the pool deck and about to get in the water. He said he needed a long warm-up since it had been a while since he swam. We laughed and promised him it would be long alright. Then the conversation went like this:

Me: We're swimming long today.
Mark: What are we doing? Like 5K??
Me: No. 10K.
Mark: WHAT?!?

I captured his expression on my camera. Classic, no?

He still actually didn't believe us until Nalani pointed to our Powergels and said How often do you see us bringing food to swim workouts?? (Not that Powergels are food. We know.) Anyway, it was funny. Maybe you had to be there? (Fwiw, Mark made it through ~45 and then bailed something about having to go to work...)

Moving on. How cute is Nalani with her matching Christmasy swim suit?? OK so you can't see it very well in this picture but it's all Christmas trees and presents and Santa, etc. So.freaking.festive.

Pool looks long, no? I secretly think it is. Longer than 50M. Maybe it's the lack of lane lines and a decent gutter system that just make it slow? Anyway, nice there are not a ton of people who come swimming lately probably because it's been so cold in the mornings. Yes. I said it. Cold. I doubt it's even 70 degrees before the sun comes up these days. Brrrrr. The water is nice though at ~80*.

Enough pictures. Time to get in and swim. Here's what we did this morning.

20 x 100's @ 1:40 w/u easy effort but not much rest- we didn't want to be cold. :)
8 x 100's @ 1:50 bands only strong effort
4 x (3@1:45, 6@1:40, 3@1:35, 1@2:00). The 1 @ 2:00 was super easy and allowed us about 20" to take a sip of energy drink or pop a powerbar energy blast between sets. By the way, have you ever tried to swim with one of those things in your mouth? I tried. 3x today. I learned that I breathe through my mouth a lot more than I ever knew... Those things are a choking hazard don't swim with them. :)
20 x 100's Paddles/buoy/bands 4 x (4@1:40, 1@1:30)

Anyway, this main part of the workout didn't look that hard to me when I wrote it, and maybe if we only went through it 2 or 3 times on a normal swim day with only 1000wu it wouldn't have been... but yikes if I didn't feel trashed by the 4th time through that main set. Shockingly, I still made the last set with paddles... I'll thank the powergel for that. The last 100 of the day was my fastest of the day so apparently I wasn't as trashed as I thought I was (mentally maybe more tired than physically? Though physically pretty damn tired). I will say though, I forgot how hard 100x100's can be. We do this 1-2x/year and I guess since I've made it through every time I've tried I just don't give it the proper respect it deserves?? Somewhere around 60-70 today though I told Nalani that I should have better mentally prepared for this and what it was going to feel like. She reminded me that we would do well to mentally prep ourselves for the marathon like that too. Oh yes. The marathon. 9 days. Lovely. Looking forward to it. I think.