Tri Class #9: Run, Abs, Swim

Last night's workout, short version:
Warmup jog
Drills
Run 10 hill repeats
6x25 abs
Swim

The long version:
I HURT today! Mostly a sore rear and shins. I think it's all muscles being rediscovered as opposed to injured. I'll have a better idea tomorrow.

It started off easily enough. We met at Palolo field and jogged around for 10 minutes or so, adding drills along the way. jog backwards, side ways hop, butt-kicks, high-knees, skipping, carioca, etc.

We jogged over to the top of a hill and stopped. The road went down and then up another hill, even steeper than the one we were on. It formed a 'U' shape of sorts. We had to run slowly down the hill until we reached a marker near the bottom and then we had to pick up the pace and really push it up the hill. When we got to the top, we could turn around and cruise back down again. Repeat the process going up the other hill. Each uphill portion counted as 1, we had to do 10.

My times, at least the ones I remember, were: (a)1:25, (b)1:30, (a)1:19, (b)1:25, (a)1:20, and then things got fuzzy. I know I never went as slow as I did on the first two hills, but I was really pushing hard and got to the point where I was glancing at my watch just to make sure I didn't go any slower, but not really trying to remember the times.

After all this, I would have been ready to call it a day. That's why I do better with coaches, they always get me to do more than I would do on my own. So, I thought we were heading for the pool. Not yet. Instead, we lied down in the grass and did six sets of crunches at 25 reps each:
Hands crossed over chest
right ankle on left leg, touch with left elbow, and vice versa
legs up w/ knees bent and reach with arms
similar to second set only left elbow to left knee and vice versa,
bicycle style (alternating elbows to bending knees)
bicycle style only bring right knee up, touch with right elbow, left elbow, then right elbow. repeat on other knee.

This was all followed by two sets of 10 pushups each.

Now the pool. The sun is setting and the wind is very strong and cold, but I get in the pool and soon find my teeth chattering. This is a Master's swim class that we've been allowed to join for the day, so it's a new coach to me. I've never really done a swim class before, so when he rattled off some drills for people to do, I was at a total loss.

I swam a few laps just doing my own thing and then asked someone to translate for me. It turned out he wanted us to drag our fingers across the surface of the water at the start of our stroke. It's to get us to focus on keeping our elbows high out of the water.

The next thing he said, I asked the coach directly what he meant. He explained it to me and I explained that I would try, but that I'm fairly new to this. The next drill was the catch-up drill where you wait until one hand was next to the other at the top of the stroke before doing the next stroke. I've yet to be able to pull this one off through some error in coordination, but today I was finally successful. There were a few false starts, but eventually I got it and pretty soon I hardly had to think about it. Cool, now if I could learn the butterfly stroke that easily.

Finally he had us swim 75m at a slow, elongated stroke, followed by 50 at a fast pace. Rest 20 seconds and repeat 3 more times. During the second set, the swim coach came and watched me for a bit. His first comment was "You're in good shape!" I'm still not sure if this meant my stroke was in good shape, or I'm physically fit. Next, to my shock, he said I was actually doing rather well. I kept my elbows high, extended my reach out, and pushed through the water well. He told me that I was actually doing better than most people in the pool.

He then told me to make sure that I didn't cross my hands in front of my body during the stroke, rather, try to keep them on a straight path throughout. He said I was mostly keeping them straight, but every so often, one would cross over. I also need to work on rotating the body more, that I should try to keep the whole body in a straight line. I think I'm moving my upper half well, but the hips don't always follow. That's the next goal.

Things to work on:
Keep hands on a straight path through the stroke
Rotate body, keep hips in line with shoulders