Drills, Drills, And More Drills!!!

It's Tuesday so you know what that means....it's swim/bike day!! When I first got in the pool to do my warmup I was out of breath really quickly. Urgh. Those few days off last week definitely didn't help even though it was needed. Rats!

Our warmup was supposed to be 75 m swim / 75 m kick....but it's me we are talking about here. As I wear earplugs, so am pretty much deaf, I heard 75 m swim with 25 m kick by 6 times. Hmmmm...I wondered why Daniella was doing something different from me. Of course I figured I was the one in the right, haha. I know, I know, one day I will learn.

One thing I did do right was KICK! Daniella is an amazing swimmer - it likely helps that she is over 6 feet tall, haha - and always kicks when swimming. Anyways, she was in front and I saw her kicking and so it reminded me to kick, kick, kick!

We did an 800 m swim with 25m scull, 50 m swim, 25 m drill. It was great as it broke up the swim and I could focus on improving my stroke. Afterwards we did the old breathing exercise and swam 400 m doing 100 m each of 3/5/7/9 stroke per breath. Phew!

Once that was done it was time to cooldown and do 100 m backstroke, and, gulp, 100 m breaststroke. I am happy to report I have made friends with the breaststroke! I kind of got it going, and it didn't feel too bad. Jen corrected me on the stroke and I think I might have it! Go figure...

Overall my swim was awesome. I could literally feel my core, back, shoulder and arm muscles totally working in synch. I loved it!!!

Tonight it was time to get on the bike. It took me a while to get set up as I brought Eleanor in. I decided to leave my road bike at the SweatLab so I don't have to drag it everywhere. In doing so though I had to change up my trainer to fit the 650 tire and change my rear tire so my race tire wasn't on. This was a bit of a painstaking procedure....but with the assistance of IronGreg and Dale I got it done. (I swear I thought I knew the easy way of changing a tire...apparantly not!) Thanks guys!

The drill tonight was a warm up with one legged spinning and high spins, then we got into the pyramid. We did three sets of 90, 100, 90, 110, 90, 120, then back down. It was an awesome workout. I really focused on my pedalling and made sure I wasn't getting hung up at the top. I also focused on my core. I have been trying to do that with all my bike sessions and I am starting to feel the payoff. Now I just have to work on maintaining even power over a long period of time. IronGreg assures me that this WILL happen over time as long as I keep doing what I'm doing.

It better...cause I already have a bike time in my head for Ironman Coeur d'Alene!!