Do The Right Thing

This evening, while Daughter was having her swimming lesson, I got into the ‘fast’ lane of the pool, to notch up 700m as part of my Hartlepool preparation.

‘Fast’ is in inverted commas, because usually at 5pm on a Friday, it has a fair cross-section of the slowest swimmers in the world in it. I include myself in this group. But not so tonight. There was a guy who was putting some serious effort in to an efficient, smooth and co-ordinated front crawl. He was lapping me about every four lengths, which I think makes him about 50% faster, with a 400m time of around 6 minutes or so. And he just kept going and going and going.

I tried drafting him a couple of times, but just couldn’t get anywhere near close enough. I’d give a huge push off from the end just after he’d launched, momentarily experience some turbulence and bubbles in the water . . . and then watch as he passed me in the opposite direction before I’d gone more than 20m.

I’m not sure if his name was Billy, but I’m telling you, this guy definitely had some fish genes in there somewhere!

Anyway, I completed my 700m, and sat on the end of the lane, watching Daughter in her lesson (doing just so well - isn’t it great being Proud Dad?), and eventually the FishMan stopped to take a drink. Which gave me a chance to congratulate him on his technique and fitness.

Turns out this isn’t accidental. He swims races up to FIVE MILES . . . his sister did a FOURTEEN MILE race last year . . . I told you it was genetic!

We chatted a bit about training, and I found out that on the only triathlon he’s done, he just about struggled through on the bike, before falling to pieces on the run (such schadenfreude on my part! I know it doesn’t cast me in such a good light, but there you go) . He did however recommend the training session at Tynemouth Pool on Saturday mornings - a session attended by a good cross section of the beach lifeguards, with a definite emphasis on speed.

He also suggested a book called “Swim Fitness” - ‘a hundred or so short chapters with swim workouts that will make you faster‘.

I’ve just had a look on Amazon, and there’s a book called The Swim Fitness Programme by Nick Gillingham. Not sure if this is the one, and there’s no chapter synopsis or reader reviews.

Anyone out there got any experience of this book?

Workout:

• Type: Swim
• Date: 07/13/2007
• Total Time: 00:17:00.00
• Distance: 692.02 m
• Average Pace: 2:25.26/100m

Filed under: Swim