weekend

HAHA all that said about the swimming...and saturday i skip my swim!!
just too tired after a difficult 5 hours out on the fixie. the plan had been to execute a bike session - so i headed out on one of my favourite 'flat' routes in essex. But, pretty early on in the ride, going through the rolling hills past chigwell row which i usaully use to get the legs warmed up, i changed my mind about that! i had a serious burning and aching going on in the lower exremities, which with a HR under 135bpm, could only mean residual FATIGUE. not a huge amount of motivation now, but i thought it'd be better to crack on and get it done rather than feel shite about bailing out and feel that i'm already behind on teh training plan.
the westerly tailwind got me to the turn-around in good spirits. but at precisly the furthest point, it started to piss down, and i'm aware of the strength of that wind, which would of course be a headwind for teh return, i knuckle down for the folwoing 2 1/2 hour slog home - in a funny way, i'm glad it's so tough.
i'm far more glad to get home and fed at the end of it. end up flipping a coin on the swimming - which means that i've already decided it's not that important. i'm off to a party later in the evening, followed by an early start so figure a few hours rest would be better value.

sad but true: i spend the free time looking over race results for my ironman performances, and working out the performance targets associated with my 2 year racing (outcome) goals. i may post those details in a future entry, but for now i'm just concerned about the swimming.

yes, back to swimming.
typically, i'm currently racing at about 1:40/100m pace, in a wetsuit. i regard this as underperformance since i can rep 100m off 1:40 pretty comfortably in the pool, and i swim faster in a wetsuit, and should swim faster under racing conditions, too!
the top 5 female swimmers, typically, are exiting the water 8/9 min quicker than me - a pace roughly equating to 1:25/100.

so, my target, ultimatly: to be able to rep off 1:25 in the pool. this is around what the guys in the top lane on our wednesady tri club session are doing (well, some of them are doing better than this ) so a more immediate target is to move up into that lane by the end of the year. hanging on with them the best i can to start with should pull me along until that pace is manageable.

this seems like a hell of an improvement - and it is about 15%- but with increased volume, and working on the technical critique i've had, a break-through is possible. here's hoping.

oh, and by the way - i was BACK in the pool today - a 4.1km swim including a set of 5x [300 in 4.40 + 20sr] followed by an hour of butterfly technique drills with the masters, in which we ot to use fins. awesome fun!!! a bit hard on the legs though - having run the Milton Keynes half marathon this morning (which went surprisingly well in the context of yesterday's suffering on teh bike, and the amount of champagne, french cheese and chocolate brownie churning in my guts when i got to bed at 1am !)