Its cold outside...let's go swimming!

With temps sinking into 20s, snow in the forecast, and the windchills below zero, what else can I do but go swimming today? I guess I wasn't the only one who had the same thoughts. I got the pool right around the same time as I normally do after work, which is around 5:30. Usually the only thing to watch out for are the high school teams that are practicing, but they only take up a few of the lanes. Today, the high schoolers had the right 3 lanes, little babies were taking up the left 2 lanes. In the middle were a total of 3 lanes for everyone else. Normally when my tri-trainee (TT) and I go swimming, we are able to get a lane together to share and carry out our workouts as planned. Today was the first day where we had to split up and do our own thing. I was able to jump into a lane with 2 other guys and she found another lane 2 over from me. I know some people have it way worse than us at their pools, so I shouldn't really complain that I had to share a lane with 2 other people. However, I've become a pool snob lately since nobody has been showing up, so I have every right to complain now that they decided all of the sudden to appear out of nowhere.

Alright, on to the workout. Today we had very limited in time because TT had to go to her quartet practice, so I decided to do an endurance swim today and see how far I could go in the 30 minutes we had. For me at this point, swim endurance workout = 30 minutes. What I need to work on is continuing my form and efficiency throughout extended length swims. It became very noticeable today, because one of the guys in my lane was super fast and blew by me pretty frequently. However, he was doing sets of 50 yard sprints and then taking breaks after each, so I don't feel so bad about it. Today was also the first time this season that I brought a watch with me into the pool. I was more curious of my splits than anything else, to give me some sort of measuring stick for where I am today, versus my splits in the future.

The result was an average split of 2:02/100 yards throughout the 1500 yard swim I managed. My splits were actually spot on for each 500 yard interval, which at least shows consistency even when I started to get tired. Last year, the furthest I swam in an endurance workout was 2000 yards, so I'm glad with where I am. So my takeaways from today are:

- Continue building up my endurance
- Keep working on my efficiency
- Don't forget to bring my watch, so I can monitor my progress

Its supposed to snow tomorrow...fun...so what should I do: spinning or run on the treadmill?