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It could be time to take the rubber ducks and bubble bath to the pool 🙂

Another warm day, another slog through the set, though mostly it wasn’t quite as bad as yesterday speed-wise, though I had to skip a 50m rep and then messed up timing the next one. I’m going to need a way to manage that better I think.

Anyhow, the times were:

45.12, 44.86, 43.18, 44.50, 44.37, 44.24, 44.81, 44.15, 43.64, 44.24, 45.13, 44.35, 44.73, 45.53, 44.83, 44.36, 46.07, skip, not timed, 47.10

I clearly was getting very tired towards the end. The 25m reps were also an improvement on yesterday:

19.81, 19.52, 19.51, 19.58, 19.50, 19.61, 19.69, 18.49

At least there was nothing over 20 seconds today 🙂 Hardly impressive though. Perhaps they can get the pool sorted by next week. I think there must be something wrong with the heating. One of the life guards told me that at one point it was 50°C on poolside earlier in the week 🙁

No improvement in the pool temperature yet, and another slog through the session just trying to do the reps somehow. It wasn’t pleasant, and my pace was well off what I was swimming only a few days ago.

Now, of course, I have the records of the actual times, so my 50m reps were:

44.18, 45.42, 45.23, 44.05, 45.24, 45.01, 45.03, 45.81, 45.52, 45.18, 45.58, 45.61, 45.83, 45.87, 45.61, 46.30, 46.39, 45.81, 45.96, 44.57

And for 25m:

18.90, 19.66, 19.80, 30.31, 19.88, 20.24, 18.83, 20.25, 19.41, 19.56

at which point I ran out of time. I just couldn’t go any faster though, and I was completely exhausted by the end of the session 🙁 It’s shocking how much difference it makes when the water is just two or three degrees warmer than usual.

The new timer is taking a while to get the hang of, just remembering to press the button at the right time, and remembering that I have pressed the button the right number of times. The sequence goes: press once to start, once to stop (the watch shows the rep time then), once to see the rest interval time, once to zero the stopwatch when the rest interval is over, and back to the beginning. I think it might actually be easier to do the last press a few seconds before the end of the rest interval so it’s possible to check that it has reset to zero before starting the next rep. I’ll give that a try next time.

Another with a very warm pool. No improvement from yesterday at all. Just another slog through the set at a relatively slow pace 🙁

All is not well at the sports centre. Today the pool was far warmer than usual — 31°C according to the lifeguards. That was way too hot to swim hard and all of us in the fast lane struggled to make any kind of pace. It just became a question of doing the best we could, which wasn’t that great at all.

Hopefully things will improve over the course of the week, but I imagine it will take a few days.

I wrote that yesterday’s session felt quite good though I had no concrete way to judge as my stopwatch, err, stopped. Permanently. Fortunately I have a spare (a spare spare in fact, as my son was using my first spare) so was able to use that today.

How little I realised yesterday. Of my 50m reps I had a couple of 42s and one of 43s when I had to avoid another slower swimmer at the turn, but sixteen of the remaining reps were 41s and the last was 39s — the first time I’ve ever been lower than 40s when I’ve done this set.

My reps in my 25m set were still all in the 18s which was a bit disappointing by comparison, but given my earlier performance perhaps that’s to be expected. I’m certainly not at all unhappy. Quite the opposite in fact. Overall it’s my best performance ever.

For whatever reason it was relatively quiet at the pool today. Irritatingly though my Sportcount “Yellow” stopwatch decided to die on me. It was working fine on Tuesday when I last used it. I think water must have found a way in. I wonder if the screws on the back can work loose over time.

I’ve had several of these over the last five years and whilst I object to the fact that they often seem to end up leaking I’ve not found anything as convenient. And in fact Sportcount now do a model targeted at pace training, so I’m going to give that a go.

Anyhow, I did my current set but without reference to a stopwatch. It felt pretty good, but who knows?