OK, I can’t leave us all hanging with a cliffhanger like that: yesterday I swam 4000m in open water (in the lanes down at Ohio Street Beach) and I did it just fine and didn’t drown or nothing.

A small update, first, on that reverse triathlon I did on Saturday. I was too polite to mention it in the post, but Shaun had mentioned that it was a pretty strenuous workout, whereas I felt it was a good workout but not too tasking. I may have even made a little fun of him over text messages. And then I noticed on my training schedule that I had skimped on 30 minutes of the run: basically I was meant to do a reverse Olympic triathlon and I did a sort of extended Sprint. So, it is I who is the fool.

So here’s the lightly complicated training structure of what I was supposed to swim yesterday:

Swim: long day, shorten the reps on the main set if you need to… warm up: 4 x 75, last 25 in each is backstroke. main: 4 x 1000, each 1000 as (1 x 750, 5 x 50), rest 2:00 after each cool down: 2 x 50 easy (swim, kick, swim)

I’ve been trying to follow all the workouts in my schedule, because that’s what it’s for, but sometimes you need to adapt to local conditions. The swim lane at Ohio Street Beach has markers at 1/4 mile/400m and 1/2 mile/800m, so I just did two reps of 1600m (out to 800m and back) and then one of 800m (out to 400m and back) with a nice 3-4 minute break at the end of each mile.

A sidebar, I have a thing I say all-too-often when people ask me about endurance sports, to explain why I like triathlons more than just distance running. A marathon and an Olympic triathlon are in the same ballpark of effort, but a marathon is just run-run-run the whole time. You get sick of running and what’s left? Oh yeah, some more running. In the triathlon, just around the time I get sick of swimming, oh, I’m out of the water and on a bike. Whee! A bike! And then when I’m sick of biking, oh hey, we’re off the bike and it’s time to run. Oh, running is fun. And then just when you’re sick of running, you’re done.

I say all that to say, I got sick of swimming at about 3600m. Which is good news, I think, because that’s nearly all I have to put up with. Whee! A bike!