Another swim just “to get my eye in”. It really is hard work at the moment. Not helped by the fact that the pool was quite busy with several people apparently attempting to swim lengths but unable to do so in a straight line 🙁
Felt better than two days ago, at least, but still a long way to go before I’m back to where I was.
USRPT distance this year: 51,150m
Total distance this year: 119,900m
Well, I’ve had a hideously long break from swimming thanks to work, holidays and family stuff. Today I just went to the pool to see if I could remember how to swim. It was like paddling in treacle 🙁
Just plodded up and down doing a few tumble turns and getting the hang of things again. My daughter was with me and flattered me by asking how come my turns were faster than hers. I suspect she has a bit of a lazy glide into the wall before turning whereas I always try to fully commit to the turn.
USRPT distance this year: 51,150m
Total distance this year: 118,600m
And yet another tumble turn practice session. I’m still nowhere near where I want to be with these, but there’s only one way to get better really.
USRPT distance this year: 51,150m
Total distance this year: 117,400m
Another attempt at my current set:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 51s, rest interval 24s
200m front crawl swim down
And once again I managed the entire set with all the reps under 50s. Very pleased with this. It seems like real progress.
USRPT distance this year: 51,150m
Total distance this year: 116,100m
Back to tumble turn practice for this session.
USRPT distance this year: 49,900m
Total distance this year: 114,250m
So, first attempt at this new set. Target time down by one second, rest time up by one:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 51s, rest interval 24s
200m front crawl swim down
Pleasingly I continued completing the 50s in under 50 seconds and it all went, err, swimmingly. Let’s hope I can keep it up.
USRPT distance this year: 49,900m
Total distance this year: 112,950m
More tumble turns today. Not much to add there…
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 111,100m
Another tumble turn practice session. As I keep working on these they’re starting to become easier, but there’s no way yet that I’d consider them a “natural” part of my swimming.
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 109,800m
Back to the pool for a third attempt at my current session:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 52s, rest interval 23s
200m front crawl swim down
Bit of an unexpected day, this. My first 50 was 47s. The first half dozen were all 47s or 48s and even after the first fifteen reps I’d not dropped out of the 49s. By the time I’d done a few more I was becoming slightly concerned that I was going to blow up in the last few and drop below the target time, but even when I tried to slow down I was still banging in sub-50s reps. The last two were just a case of hanging in there, but even so I still came in sub-50 on both.
So, another 25 reps completed and the target time drops again, but the most amazing thing was being sub-50s for every single rep. I genuinely didn’t believe I could do that at the moment. Soon I shall have to though 🙂 It does mean that whilst I’ll now be looking at a target time of 51s, I have in fact gone from reps of 60s on 1:25 at the start of February (which I couldn’t actually complete at first) to sub 50s on 1:15 in five months, though actually I’ve probably missed over six weeks of that period for one reason or another (weather/illness/injury/work mostly). I’m quite pleased with that.
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 108,500m
A little progress so far this week. On Monday evening I finished wrapping the timbers in DPC, then cut most of the joists to length. My intention is to have them at 400mm spacing, but quite how they’re arranged depends on whether I can get them all in positions where they’ll go around the piers.
On Wednesday evening I put the lower blocks for the piers in place and started laying out the joists. I think I have an arrangement that allows me to move one timber 20mm from its ideal position and means I don’t have to cut any to work around the piers. By the time I finished about half the joists the Sun had set and it was getting quite dark.
The outer rails for the floor on the left hand side in the above picture appear to be increasingly bowed, perhaps because of the hot weather. I shall pull the sides together with some ratchet straps once all the joists are in place (easier to put them in place where there’s a larger gap than to make the gap smaller and then try to fit them). Once everything is nailed/screwed together it should stay square.
