I Swear I'll Stop Talking About Swimming So Much ONE of These Days...

... but today is not that day.

Seriously, I'm still making solid gains in the pool. I can't shut up about it QUITE yet.

I keep doing the same 6-8 workouts, and the times are not dropping as much as they used to, but generally, I'm still getting a bit faster. Last Friday, I did the 15x100 (w/ 0:20 rest) workout I've been doing lately, and it was just 1/3 of a second faster per 100 on average. A few days before that, I did a 4x400 workout that was about 2/3 of a second SLOWER per 400 than the last time I did that. So not EVERY workout has been getting faster. I'm no machine. Except when I'm in bed.

Then I had an amazing swim on Monday of this week! I did the 9x200 (w/ 0:20 rest) workout I've been doing for a few months, and I averaged UNDER 3:00 for the first time ever! In Nov, my average was 3:09. In Dec, it was 3:07. Earlier in Jan, it was 3:02. Then this week, I averaged 2:59.7! Crazy!

The week wasn't over. Wednesday, I did 4x400 again. I wasn't planning on going too hard. But the first one was relatively fast. Then the 2nd one was faster. So then I tried to kill the final 2. This was the 5th time I did this workout, and here were my average 400s from each time I've done it:

- Oct 2014: 6:15
- Dec 2014: 6:12
- Jan 10: 6:10
- Jan 20: 6:10
- Jan 28: 5:59!

Yeah, really. After knocking a few seconds off each time, I took off over 10 seconds this past week.

I never thought times like these would have been possible just 3 months after deciding to start hitting the pool more often. I was lacking on my swim speed in Oct/Nov (I was faster in March and hadn't gotten back to that point), and I got back to "feeling OK" about my swimming by maybe late December. But now it's just still getting better. And I really owe it all to simply swimming more often. I'm really putting in a lot more yards than I'm used to. You want proof? Let's take a look at my Nov-Jan yardage the last couple of years:

2014-15: 61,150 yards!!
2013-14: 33,680 yards (training for a half iron-distance swim in the Red Sea)
2012-13: 12,900 yards
2011-12: 5,600 yards (yes really)
2010-11: 26,000 yards (pre-kids)
2009-10: 14,100 yards

To put these last 3 months of over 60,000 yards in perspective: in 2012, I only swam 39,000 yards TOTAL.

Swim more = get better. Who knew?