Non Labor Labor Day Weekend

Since I spent my Saturday with cars I didn't want to make Sunday another hot day without a dip in the pool. I checked out which local pool had the most lap swim lanes during the early afternoon and I planned my workout. I ended up at the Santa Monica Swim Center. I like the depth of the pool and the gutters. I can fly in that pool compared to the usual 6 lane 25 yard gutter-less narrow laned wave... I mean practice pool I train in. My workout pre-planning consisted of telling myself I was going to do a ladder of 1,000, 900, 800, etc on down to 100 for a totally of 5,500 yards. When I plan workouts like that I usually split each chunk of distance into a set. After I got down to my 300 yard set I decided it had been long enough so I warmed down and got out. I figured it was time to give up my lane space. Although by then the crowd had thinned out... Anyway for my own memory's sake this is what I did:
1000 (warmup): 2 x 500 on whatever...
900: 3 x 300 (100 free, 100 back, 100 free / 100 free, 100 breast, 100 free / 100 free, 100 back, 100 free) on 3:30 I think...
800: 400 kick with fins 100 fly, 100 back / 4x100 kick with fins 100 fly, 100 back on 1:30 keeping 100s below 1:10
700: 6x100 kick breast 100 with board, 100 without board on 1:50 / 100 swim stretch out
600: 400 pull free / 200 pull free on 2:40
500: 2x200 pull free on 2:40 / 100 swim stretch out
400: 4x100 50 back, 50 free / 50 breast, 50 free on 1:40 relax and stretch out
200 (warmdown): 4x50 easy

They key thing before I hopped into the pool was that I checked out the lap lanes to see the best place for me to swim. All the "fast" lanes were full of people splitting the lanes. I also didn't see anyone who could possibly circle swim in a lane with me. I waited around for someone to get out so I could at least get half a lane. It was about 10 minutes and I got a spot. Sometime later, when I was in between sets, a guy approached my lane and asked if we could circle swim. I looked around at the other lanes to see if all the others were circling, nope people were still splitting. The guy I was sharing a lane with I was also lapping every 50. I blatantly told the guy asking to circle that no I did not want to circle and that I would run him over if we did. He didn't hear me that well because he asked, "What you said you won't run me over?" I corrected him and told him that no I WOULD in fact run him over. He walked away before I could explain my response to his question. Apparently he found another lane to swim in.

I can never understand why some people go to the fastest lane, with the clearly fast swimmers, and hop in and proceed to swim heads up freestyle/breaststroke creating a traffic jam behind them. You will not magically learn and become Mark Spitz by swimming in the fast lane when you can't hold the pace! I would think people would be intimidated of swimming with fast swimmers for the most part. Most of the masters swimmers I train with won't even share a lane with me. There will be 3 to 4 people in the lane next to me but I will get a lane to myself. I'm not mean, I don't bite or kick people in the ribs. I just don't slow down... I don't like to dilly dally between sets. In fact at Santa Monica the people who got in to split the lane with me while I was there, kept moving out and going to different lanes.


Enough of that...
This weekend a friend from Japan was in town. This friend is probably the biggest fan of the R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R in the world. He was a good person to pick for knowledge while running the R34 GT-R in the SCCA Speed World Challenge last year. I need to go visit Japan sometime soon and see his toys. His R34 is pretty incredible from what I hear!

Aside from that I hit the ocean at Manhattan Beach Monday morning for a spotting drill swim. I lead the group around the Manhattan Beach Pier, towards Hermosa, down to the second buoy (about 1 mile) and then back around Manhattan Pier. The water was cool by the beach, but outside of the pier it was hot! I almost missed the water temp I had been swimming at in Zuma... almost...