Already excited for open water season

Yesterday, I got the latest issue of Swimmer Magazine in the mail. Almost the entire issue is dedicated to open water swimming. It has articles discussing feeding, safety devices, the top open water swims in the world and even a story on people having heart attacks during cold-water swims. Just thumbing through it was getting me amped for my first full open water season.

Gordon Gridley introduced me to the sport a few months into last season, so I didn't get to experience it from start to finish. This year, I already own a kayak, which technically isn't mine, but the owners live overseas now, so until they return, it's safe to assume it's mine. The real challenges will be getting my shoulder back into ship-shape for open water marathons and talking Jen into paddling for me during the weekends.

Gords, Josh Green, and Goody Tyler have been doing a ton of distance stuff in preparation for their big open water swims this year and I'm super jealous. Gords is swimming the English Channel, Josh is swimming the full length of Bear Lake and Goody is tackling the Catalina Channel. All three are monster swims of 20 miles or longer. I'll be fortunate to pull off my first 10k swim at Deer Creek in August. Hopefully, when my swimming and stamina have improved, I'll be able to meet up with those guys more often.

Anyway, I hit the pool for my second swim of the week today. I got there a little late, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to do a ton of yards, so I got in as many as I could before they kicked me out.

Here's what I did.

Warm up
100 free
Core
500 free (bilateral breathing)
4 X 200 alternating 150 free, 50 breast
Cool down
100 breast

It was all I could manage in just under 25 minutes, before the pool closed, but I was super stoked to swim a full 500 yards with bilateral breathing. I'd been having a hard time with just 150 yards in multiple sets, but I found that after about 250, I got into a bit of a rhythm and it got much easier. Distance swimming is nice like that. It really isn't that much compared to the thousands of yards I used to swim consecutively before, but this bilateral breathing thing is a whole different beast. I'm excited to try a longer one next week.

Total distance: 1,500 yards