Monday I did my first workout from my new triathlon coach.  I knocked out a 2400y swim in 54:24.

It was also the first time in a while that I’ve gone swimming outside of a masters practice. It was good to jump in and knock out laps by myself, though I definitely like swimming with the group.

I worked on a two-beat kick, as I’m trying to do a better job of tying my kick and stroke together. It seems to work nice. I’ll have to play around more with six-beat, but two-beat is easier to get the timing down.

The first 400 swim I did during warmup was in 6:08, which is faster than I can remember timing it in. That’s pretty cool since I wasn’t trying to swim all out, just keeping it pretty easy.

Also, I’ve been using smaller paddles at masters, and this was the first time in a long time that I used my larger paddles, and I did ok with them. I think I’ve built a bit of strength since I used them last. Not sure how I’d hold up with them in the masters group though, I’d probably get pushed harder.

 

Yesterday I did a time trial on the bike as a baseline.  It was a 40 minute TT sandwiched by a 10 minute warmup and cool-down.  I hadn’t biked since the Tour DeWitt post, so I was wondering how I would do.  I averaged 20.2 mph and covered 13.51 miles in the 40 minutes.

I was hoping it would be warm, but indeed it was not.  I think the temperature hovered around 50 degrees for the ride.   My hands froze and there was definitely no sweating happening.

It was a bit strange to be on the bike trail when it was covered in leaves.  There were some times when I couldn’t see the bike trail at all, and I had to aim the bike down the approximate middle of the trail and hope there were no hidden obstacles in the leaves.  From here on out, I think most of my work will be done on the trainer.