First practice at Chimo...

Well, last night was our first practice at Chimo pool. There were only 5 of us that showed up that night no doubt to the dumping of snow that we got over the weekend which made the roads extremely treacherous. Despite the poor road conditions, I decided to make the drive up to Coquitlam to swim. I left early and gave myself lots of time to get there because I knew I would not be going very fast for fear of colliding with something. I don't have snowtires on my car but fortunately, I learned how to drive in the winter in Ottawa, so I learned how to drive in snow effectively. I think that has made a big difference in my confidence in my ability to drive in these conditions.

Anyways, the practice was fairly difficult but not too much so. We swam a total of about 2300m. We started off by doing 10x50 on :50. The first 4 were freestyle and the 5th one was backstroke. We repeated that twice. I was pretty stiff when I got into the water so I didn't go that hard on that set until I could get my muscles loosened up.

After that, we did a long kick set with fins as follows:

250 kick on 5:00 (1:00 pace per 50)
200 kick on 3:40 (55 pace per 50)
150 kick on 2:30 (50 pace per 50)
100 kick on 1:30 (45 pace per 50)
2x50 kick on :40

The last 2 kicks I made but not by much, only a couple of seconds. I guess having big fins is an advantage.

The next thing we did was 4x100 IM on 2:30 descending 1-4
My times were:

1:37
1:31
1:29
1:26

So, definitely not a bad effort. I was pretty winded by the end of the set so I guess it shows that I was definitely working hard. We finished off the practice with a 200m cool down (50 scull and 50 swim).

This brought us up to a total of 2300m which is pretty good. On a side note, I do not like swimming in this pool that much overall since it so warm. You jump in the shallow end and it's virtually a bath. It's horrible. It's definitely not conducive for any kind of fast swimming but I did the best I could under the circumstances. I'll have to swim there anyway at least until the 15th of December, so I think I can put up with it until then.

After that, I'm heading back to Ontario for 3 weeks with my girlfriend to visit our families for the Xmas holidays. I plan to continue doing some training (both swimming and weights) while I'm gone. I'll just have to find some good workouts to do. I know that there are swimming and workout facilities in virtually every place that I'll be going. I don't think it will be too much of a problem.

Hopefully the weather will hold up for the Nanaimo meet this weekend. We're supposed to get some more snow later this week but I heard it's not going to be that much (maybe 1 or 2 more cm). I am fairly sure if only this amount falls on top of the snow we already have, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm just going over there primarily to have some fun and swim some off events. Let's hope it turns out to be a good time.