Amazing session

I love it when you get one of these. They don’t come around this often, so when they do, all you can do is sit back and enjoy the way your body is performing. The session in question was the 3000m Thursday night swim session with the club. I was actually feeling halfway to dead when I was getting my trunks on, and not looking forward to the forthcoming swim. My feelings weren’t improved when Mark, one of the guys I train with and an absolute Ironman machine, told me the main set was groups of 200m (8 x 200m of 3:30 as it turned out).

Once I was swimming though, it was a different story. Tiredness fell away, and my feel for the water, despite the presence of nine other people in the lane with me (usually there’s only five of us in the fast lane), was excellent. I can’t remember the exact sequence of times, but it ran along the lines of 2:40, 2:43, 2:42, 2:43, 2:44, 2:41 2:40, 2:40. I was averaging under 2:42, and getting faster towards the end. Sure, I would have been struggling against a steroid fuelled great white, but by my standards I was absolutely flying. I was only doing 17 strokes per length as well, so the efficiency was there as well as the speed. The world record for 200m, incidentally, is 1:42. Read it and weep. That means my personal best over the distance, 2:39, is 57 seconds slower than the world record. And I’m considered a strong triathlon swimmer.