50x100's

In my attempt to grow gills and become as much of a fish as I can this year, I reached another milestone of 5k yards in one session yesterday. Ever since I saw the 100x100's swim workout I have tried to chase down that workout. With no injuries to resport, a session of master's swimming done, and a steady and consistent routine of getting to the pool each week I have watched my long swim distances increase. Yesterday's 5k swim I believe is still about 2k short of what I can put in, in one effort, but it was another milestone to scratch off.

Monday's have typically become my long day of swimming, and right now I am trying to hit swims in the area of 4-5k yards. With my very unoriginal design of these sets I usually swim multiple sets of 400, 500, and 800's. I was not looking forward to yesterdays long swim and so I changed it up and decided to do 50x100's I drew up the set in my head on the way to the pool and the goal was variety. I wanted each stroke done, use toys, and of course try different paces as well.

The only mistake I made in my opinion was starting the swim after a 1k warmup of 5x100 IM's. That butterfly gets me everytime, and the kids in the lanes over getting swimming lessons didn't need their arm floaties as bad as I did! With sufficient energy now swapped from my arms I eased into the rest of my set and was able to finish with a hard set of 5x100's all swam under a 1:30 pace, leaving the wall at 1:45. That hard effort at the end told me that I still had plenty left in my arms for another 1-2k and that I am building my muscular endurance up very well. All in all the swim tok me 1:50 to complete, a time that I can reduce by a large amount by simply not resting as much as I did on some of those sets.

10x100 choice (500 swim, 100 kick, 400 pull)
5x100 IM
5x100 forgot what was done here...eeek!
10x100 pull
5x100 (25 back/25 free/25 back/25 free)
5x100 (25 kick, 50 free, 25 kick)
5x100 hard 1:45, all swam under 1:30
5x100 pull easy

Now that this swim is behind me and I feel that I have gotten back on track after a slow month of swimming, I am aiming for 100x100 maybe for my birthday.

BC