Swim-Run Training Morning

Four ladies in turned up to swim in my lane this morning. In the order of swimming, fastest first they are:

Sandra, who was not feeling up to swimming in the faster lane because her fifteen month old baby who has been poorly kept her up half the night so she joined us, hoping for an easy swim.

Bekka, who swims +Yoga, Pilates and Gym merely to keep in shape announced as soon as we hit the water that she had to leave early because she had a rowing machine challenge on today.

Me, no excuses, none needed, I love my swimming and never find it boring which is the complaint I hear most often, but I always think that people who get bored and boring so there you go. Then swimming fourth was Christine my new triathlete lady to be, who had made a special effort to get to the session this morning.

 

The set shown here is set pointedly for Rebecca who is most often my swim partner, well twice every week anyway. So it is a bit short and whenever she leaves the water, I start at to top of the set again if I am on my own but today Christine would join me once the other two had left, Sandra only swims about 30 minutes in the set then does some water based exercises for her legs with which she has a medical history . So in fact all these sets work as a repeated twice set for them and rolling over a third time for me.

Lane 2
Distance	Clock	Swim rest
200	60	5.30
200	30	5.30
100	60	2.40
50	40	1.15
50	55	1.15
200	10	5.20
200	30	5.20
100	50	2.30
50	20	1.15
50	35	1.15
100	50	2.40
200	30	5.20
1500 mtr	Swim down

When swimming on my own I drum up some nice music in my head to suit whatever I am doing and during my 30 minutes backstroke that was the second half of my own set this last Monday, I swam to Camille Saint-Saȅns beautiful haunting Danse Macabre, that fitted perfectly to my stroke to hold it strong and steady.

For the last ten minutes today, I worked with Christine to try to improve her push off and turns which is where she is presently being dropped. Bad turns and weak push offs can be costly in a pool based event. I had tried to get her to cut off the shallow end when she had been dropped and get back on the train. Of course she argued that she would then not be swimming the distance and I had to explain that when there are a group of you swimming in a narrow lane that you cannot have one little tadpole doing its own thing and ruining the swim rest times for the others. She didn’t get that, but she will eventually. She is very keen to work and it is hard to teach the lane etiquette and update little points of the stroke and expect everything to be understood. She can still only work on one thing at a time but it will all come together soon.

In the changing room chatter she stated that she still feels that she will needs to do more pool based events before an open water swim….. if ever!!!!!!!! She is trying to ignore me when I tell her that WE WILL be going into the sea when it is warmer. She has not yet bought or even considered a wetsuit, that is being put off as long as possible and not just because of the cost. Baby steps, little baby steps.

After the swim Steve and I drifted up the road two miles to Arundel for our Wednesday morning run. The run route is one lap of the Arundel triathlon run course, so is it 5km instead of the 10km in the event. It is a Challenging course with steep sections within the off road part.

The plan this morning was to extend it a little bit so that in a couple of weeks it will be the full two laps, this giving us two hard 10km runs per week plus a short sea front run too. That is going to have to do for my 70.3 event training since I do not plan to run any half marathons until I have to and I don’t expect any problems getting through that on the day.

Today's run was our second fastest for that course, the fastest was posted by me when I ran on my own one day when Steve was injured and he just did the timing, when I had made a conscious effort not to be slower because Steve was not with me. It was just a few seconds.

Admittedly I do pull that little old lady card out sometimes when it suits me. I do remind Steve that I am approaching my seventy eighth birthday this summer. Then my friend Anthony Forsyth, pictured above, who is a very successful ultra runner living in California, posted the sad news about Canadian runner Ed Whitlock that I have copied here.

 Canadian Running is saddened to announce that Ed Whitlock has passed away at 86. Age-graded, many of Whitlock’s marathon performances would have ranked among the greatest performances of all time. His 3:56:33 men’s 85-89 record last fall in Toronto is the equivalent of 2:08:57, which would have placed him second overall against some of the fastest runners in the world. His 70-and-over world record converts to a 2:00:18. The world record currently stands at 2:02:57.

The Canadian running legend is notably the first, and only, person older than 70 to have broken 3:00 in the marathon. He ran 2:54:49 when he was 73.

He raced in November 2016 setting a 15K world record for men 85-89 at the Stockade-athon 15K Road Race. Prior to that, he bettered the men’s 85-89 world record in the marathon by more than 30 minutes running 3:56 at the 2016 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon last October. It’s believed that Whitlock had not done much running in 2017 as he was nursing a shoulder injury.

Whitlock was born in London in 1931. He grew up in England and immigrated to Canada following college graduation. He resided in Milton, Ont. and famously put in his training at the Evergreen Cemetery, located steps from his home.