New Suit! (Fast Suit?!?)

I took a "suit selfie" pre-swim yesterday as I finally threw away my old suit after about 5 years and put on a new one:

I ACTUALLY had elastic and fit fine. I didn't think much of it.

Then I headed to the pool to do 200s, which are sort of my "go to" workout - I'll do those when I don't have any other big plans or thoughts. I had a longer swim with some broken 400s and 200s last week (that I'll mention in Saturday's post), so it was "just some 200s" for this workout.

Only my first 200 was CRAZY fast. I've been swimming around a 3:06 - 3:09 to start these workouts, but I swam a 3:01 to start this one!!

And then my 2nd one was ALSO 3:01!

"OK Steve... maybe your old suit was so nasty and so loose that it was slowing me down!" That's gross. I'm gross. I'm sure my old suit was see-through and nasty. Yesterday, I swam 200s of:

3:01, 3:01, 3:02, 3:03, 3:00, 3:04, 2:59, 2:57 = 3:00.88 average!

And for what it's worth, that was 8x 200 when all year I've been doing 7x 200. Last month, my 200 workout looked like this:

3:05, 3:09, 3:09, 3:09, 3:08, 3:08, 3:06 = 3:07.7 average

Looking back through the beginning of 2023, here are all my 200 averages before that from July (at the top) back through January (at the bottom):

3:07.7 (slowest 3:09, fastest 3:05)
3:07.5 (slowest 3:10, fastest 3:03)
3:07.0 (slowest 3:09, fastest 3:03)
3:17.5 (slowest 3:20, fastest 3:12) - adjusted 100yd times from a 50m pool
3:07.7 (slowest 3:10, fastest 3:04)
3:05.1 (slowest 3:08, fastest 2:59)
3:05.0 (slowest 3:07, fastest 3:01)
3:05.3 (slowest 3:09, fastest 3:03)
3:06.0 (slowest 3:08, fastest 3:02)

So of the 63 200s that I've done in 2023 (before yesterday) only ONE was sub-3:00. And yesterday, I swam 2 that were sub-3:00, and that one of those was in an EXTRA set.

Then I had a nice upper body workout in 2 DEAD areas of the gym:

My bag and water bottle in the middle as I finished up biceps and triceps.