As the title suggests, I swam yesterday and ran this morning. I've gotten into a fairly good routine with the occasional off day. I'm going to have a bit of an off weekend with a trip with L to the Smokies planned. That means I'll have to skip tomorrow's planned swim unless I can find a way to get to a pool in the hometown in the morning before leaving. I know there are a couple available, but I'll probably just plan to skip it and pick back up on Monday.
I did get to the pool yesterday afternoon after skipping my usual morning swim due to staying up later than planned Tuesday night. The pool was fairly crowded. The two lanes that are partitioned off were taken as well as another lane outside of the partitioned area, so I just picked a spot that wasn't taken and started swimming. After about 150 yards, I noticed a large group of youngsters come in the door. I knew this would hinder my efforts to maintain straight lines and constant pacing. I looked over to the lanes and noticed one of them was now empty so I took the opportunity to move over there. I picked up where I had left off and completed my 400 yard swim. I then did 200, then 4X100 followed by 4X50. It's definitely getting easier. At some point along the way I've broken through a barrier that was holding me back. My ultimate goal for the pool right now is to be able to swim a mile non-stop. My whole workout right now is about 3/4 of a mile and I usually end the workout tired, but feeling like I could go a little longer.
Today's run was great. It was cool out, but not cloudy so it wasn't as dark today as it was on Tuesday. I wanted to try to go a little faster today than Tuesday. My goal wasn't to push my limits, just to work to maintain my current level of fitness. My hope was to maintain something around 9:40/mile for the 4.5 mile run, if possible. I started out and felt a little more fatigued than usual after the first 3 or 4 minutes. That could have been due to the swim yesterday afternoon, or any number of things. I pushed through it, trying to maintain my pace and knowing that I would start to feel better after a mile or so. When the distance alert beeped I looked down to see I had finished mile 1 in 9:37 - almost right on my planned pace. I continued on , just holding my pace steady and trying to stay in the groove in which I had found myself. Everything was feeling good through the second mile and I finished it in 9:37 as well. I'm pretty proud of my pacing. It's not easy to do two miles in a row at the exact same pace. As the mile two alert beeped I felt my legs pulling me along faster. It wasn't a conscious thing...I think it's become almost instinct to pick up the pace at a certain place in the park. It's always at the turn around at the end of the road. I went with what my body was telling me and just held on for the ride. I knew I was still a little short of the halfway point of my run and that it would be difficult to maintain this pace through to the end, especially with the big hill at the end of my run, but I tried to keep it up through the third mile anyway. I completed mile 3 in 9:22, cutting 15 seconds off my previous two miles. Nothing earth shattering, but my heart rate had only risen slightly. At this point I knew I was going to have to ease up a bit if I wanted to finish my run so I tried to back off to about the 9:40 pace I had started out at. As always, it seemed harder to slow down than to speed up, but I managed to reduce my 4th mile pace to 9:35 and kept my heart rate steady with what it had been throughout mile 3, with the exception of the final big hill in the park next door on which it climbed to 171 bpm. The last half mile was mostly either very flat or down hill, so I picked up the pace to finish up and averaged a 9:16/mile pace.
Today's Stats: I did 4.59 miles in 43:38. That's quite a bit faster than I did a slightly shorter distance on Tuesday. That's an average pace of 9:30/mile. I'm very pleased with that pace. It's a good baseline for continuing to improve my speed next week. I'm ready to start working toward the 8 minute mile threshold. I have a feeling that's going to be a bigger challenge than 9:00/mile was. I expect improvements to become increasingly more difficult as I get faster.
Next Up: A Saturday morning run with my love in the Smokies of Tennessee. I'm looking forward to that. Next week I'll continue my MWF swim routine and I'm hoping to start working this plan to bring my next 5k time down to around 27 minutes. I can run one mile at the pace it will take to do that, so I'm pretty sure I can work up to doing 3 miles at that pace.
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