I have a bit of a quandary with my upcoming 1-hour Postal swim. As I've been training for it, I've concentrated on hitting certain yardage (meters) at specific times. However, for whatever reason, at the SCM pool that I swim at about 99% of the time, there won't be a Postal swim conducted this year. I had to sign up for a time-slot at another nearby pool...that I've never actually swam in. It's a rather new facility at a local college. I was under the assumption that it too is a 25 SCM pool. So no big deal. But I just found out that it's a SCY pool. So my question is...other than the obvious of doing the math to convert from meters to yards to determine where I want to be at certain times...is there anything else that I should be considering? Should I just throw out my planned time/distance milestones from the SCM pool and just "go for it" in the SCY pool?
Dan
11507
Argh! I planned to do mine today at the local YMCA, but schools are closed for winter break, so the place was teeming with kiddies. I was asked to change lanes twice during my swim, so I didn't get a continuous hour.
Argh, Argh! Double freakin' argh! I couldn't complete an hour Tuesday because kids overran the pool at the YMCA, so today I decided to go to a different fitness center where there are two pools, a kids activity pool and a separate lap pool. As I'm closing in on 2000 yds there was an "incident" in the kiddie pool causing the staff to close it for cleaning, so again 40-50 kids decided to join us in the lap pool. I gave up. One more chance next Tuesday.
Well, I completed my swim last week and essentially did exactly the same yardage as last year...well almost. Last year I did 4040 yards. I did not stop at all during last year's swim. But recently a co-worker who is a nutritionist, and also a swimmer, convinced me that I should be taking in fluids during my workouts. Before, generally I would do as much as a 4000m (sometimes more) workout without drinking. And of course I would frequently experience leg cramps late in the workout. I knew what the problem was, but was just too forgetful/dumb/stupid/lazy/bullheaded to have fluids there with me??? So a month or so ago, at the insistence of my nutritionist co-worker, I started bringing a bottle of electrolyte drink to have poolside, and would drink about every few hundred yards. It was working. So I figured that for the ePostal I'd have the bottle but only stop to drink IF I felt cramps coming on (which I know is usually too late). And so I did...and I stopped twice to drink...but I really think I didn't need to, and could have fought off the cramps. Literally I stopped for like 3 seconds each time. And did I make it to the 4040yds I swam last year? No. I missed it by 5 measly yards for a total this year of 4035yds. Damn that water bottle!
Dan
Preliminary results up. www.usms.org/.../1hrresultsw_prelim.pdf
53 year old female goes 5465. Dang Gina!
Wow. As far as I can see that's 250 yards farther than the next woman of any age (39 year old Ashley Whitney at 5,215)! It annihilates the old women's 50-54 record in the event which was 5,185 yards by Ellen Reynolds.
