Instagram of the Day: Freezing Pool and HARD Aqua Jogging

I just posted this on Instagram:

"Pool heater has been broken, so this was the coldest pool I'd ever been in. I thought I'd
try some belt-less aqua jogging today to stay warm. HOLY HEART-RATE BATMAN!"

First of all, YES, the water was cold. I thought it was a bit colder than usual on Thursday, and the lifeguard today confirmed that. It's been down for maybe a week. It was COLD.

Secondly, aqua jogging withOUT a floaty belt on is intense. I tried it for JUST a few seconds at the end of an aqua jog over the weekend, and it WAS do-able, but it was hard. Today, I thought I'd do 4x or 5x 2:00 or 2:30 efforts withOUT the belt. Well, I barely got to 2:00 the first time and had to take a break (because I was breathing so hard and could barely keep my mouth about the water). After that, I did only 90 sec efforts (with 30 sec rest). I was able to do 5. I took my heart rate over 15 seconds after #3, and it was 41 (or 164 beats/min). And as I noted in last week's post about some recent aqua jogging workouts, your heart rate drops FAST in the pool - it slowed up a lot over the 15 seconds that I counted it. Had it kept the pace of when I first started timing, I bet it would have had 43 beats over those 15 seconds, or a heart rate of 172. AND THEN I HAD 2 MORE INTERVALS LEFT. That was brutal. I'll do it again, but maybe not for a while.

I started the workout with a 7 min WU, did 10 mins of 1 hard then 1 easy, then took off the belt for the brutal stuff above. And I ended with a descending ladder of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 min with 0:15 rest between. Then about a 5 min CD for a total of 52 mins: my shortest aqua jog in recent history.

Back with a week of workouts shortly.