100x100's - Happy New Year!

This set has been on my mind for awhile, and finally it became a reality! A little bit of planning ahead of time, and having a true army show up for the set got me real excited to bust out a 100x100's swim set.

If you are curious to what was done in the pool here is the set below:

10x100 warmup
10x100 pick it up
5x100 50 free/50 back
5x100 50 kick/50 swim
20x100 toys paddles/buoys/bands/snorkel
15x 100 anything goes
10x100 25 sprint/75 Cruz
10x100 kick w/fins
5x100 IM
5x100 negative split
5x100 cool down

My morning was supposed to start at 6am sharp, but I had alarm troubles and slept in until 8am...oops! Having a 2.5 hour drive ahead of me and the swim starting at 930am I knew I was going to be late. If you are a Seinfeld fan, my morning resembled this...

click here to see what my morning wake up was like

Anyway once I got to the pool everyone was already 3k in, so I joined in on the set at 3k, and decided I would swim the the first 3k of the set as my final 3k, but backwards, and use the warmup as my cooldown. For the ease of writing this here is my thought process through the almost 4-hour swim session.

1-15 Used pull buoy as warmup "Man I am gonna cruise through going at this pace!"
16-20 "Let's change up the toys, time for some fins!"
20-35 Anything goes set "Boy we are taking a lot of time for rest, why is everyone soo tired? Oh yeah I am 3k behind...crap!"
36-40 We decided to blend the next 2 sets together and swim 4 sets of 5x100 "Wow I am getting towards the middle of the set already"
41-45 "Kicking is so much easier with fins! ;)"
46-55 "IM's are next...good play Ben showing up late, your gonna swim those at only 5k, not 8k like everyone else...well done!"
56-60 IM set "Lifeguard's must be concerned about my safety in the water with my butterfly"
61-65 Negative split "Somehow I don't think these are going to be true negative splits"
66-70 "cool-down" "Yeah right now I wish I was cooling down with everyone else"
71-75 "Hmm everyone is done already and I still have 3k to go...guess I'm not so wise anymore showing up 3k into the set, could've been done by now"
76-80 Officially swimming solo "I must have 30 years on the guy next to me and he is hanging on my feet!"
81-85 "Why did I think this would be a good idea?"
86-90 Pete and Lindsey stayed while I finished my set, good thing their encouragement from afar was much needed!
91-99 "Duuuuude, just 1k to go, how many times have you swam this as a warmup!?"
100 "Boo yah, screw a cool down, lets see what I have left in the tank...1:29 on the final 100"

Felt great to get out off the water after 4 hours, probably the longest I have spent in chlorine since I was a kid at the wavepool in Noah's Ark. Already planning the next crazy swim, 1-hour postal swim later this month. However, I still hope that a tradition was born on Monday and this becomes at least a yearly swim to start the new year!



Happy 2012!

BC