Wednesday Night SCAQ Swim

August 23, 2017

After Monday night’s swim, I was chatting with a lady in the locker room, and I asked her if she ever went to the Wednesday night swims. She said she did, and that she thought they were the most fun. I knew that the Ballona Festival was starting on Friday, so I didn’t want to battle traffic and people in the parking lot to come swim that evening, so based on her words and the desire to avoid traffic, I went to the Wednesday night “cross train” swim.

Man. Oh. Man.

To start out with, things were a bit confusing because the Culver City Pool has seemingly decided to change where our typical lanes are. So the first 15 minutes consisted of every swimmer getting into the lane they were used to getting into, swimming a few laps, then being asking to move into a different lane, then swimming a few more laps, then moving into a different lane, and so on. I personally switched lanes 7 times.

After that chaotic start, we were given a massive set that included a mix of stroke work; none of which I was physically prepared for. Mentally, perhaps, because I knew it was stroke night, but not physically. The lane I ended up in was with two others, and I settled into the middle position behind a girl who swam the whole time with fins and a guy who only chose to do breast stroke. I never made the intervals, but I did make all the distances, so there is that. I pretty much just swam 1,500 yards straight.

I will say, that over time during the workout, I warmed up to each stroke, and it became a pseudo muscle memory thing. For the duration of the workout, when a 25 yard butterfly stroke came up, I only made it partially across before switching to free. The first few times was maybe 10 yards of butterfly, then 15, then 20, and finally for the last time IMs I made it all the way across.

I won’t be at the cross train swim next Wednesday because I have plans to meet up with some ladies, but I think after that I will make it a regular thing. The diverse strokes will definitely be a physical challenge, but with time, I hope to improve.

The Workout:

• 250-ish warm-up
• 3 rounds: 200 free, 100 kick, 100 IM, 50 free, 50 stroke
• Then we just did 100 IMs until time was up. Maybe 6 of them with easy 50s in-between?