Swimmin' in the bathtub!!!!

I don't know if anyone remembers the 80's or not, but Gremlins 2 was an awesome cheesy 80's flick. Right now would be a great time for me to reference Goat Boy from Saturday Night Live. I think I will then. Pogo!!!!



Anyway, now that you remember the 80's and Gremlins 2, there was a scene in Gremlins where despite their hatred, well, actually I take that back, I don't know that the Gremlins actually HATED water, it just made them reproduce like bunnies on 'roids. Anyway, despite their "unique" relationship with water shall we say, there was a scene when the Gremlins take over the building and there was a Gremlin in a shower cap, and he's "Singin' in the bathtub!!!!". So, for my title today, I used the Gremlins for inspiration, and then tweaked that just a little bit to get "Swimmin' in the bathtub!!!!". I'm so clever.... and yet so completely and totally random it's not even funny! So, yeah, later I'll actually do the write up on the WOD I did, which really wasn't a CF WOD at all. I went swimming.... DUH! :P

So... this whole swimming thing. Yeah, about that. I haven't been in the water in close to a year. Honestly, I think the last time I did a swim workout was last January/February ish. When I used to swim competitively, 4-5 days a week, our practices were usually between 1.5-2 hours long. If you figure that our average practice was between 5-6,000, that averages out to about 3,000 yards/hr. More or less given the intervals given and the types of sets given. Obviously, a kick set will take more time than a sprint set, and a long distance set, while LONG, will take a pretty big chunk of time. My average when doing sets is about 1,000 per 20 minutes, so roughly 3,000/hr. In laymens terms, that's almost 2 miles an hour of swimming. And let me just say, that swimming, is not quite the same as running. In running, you're depending upon some of the strongest muscles in your body, your legs. In swimming, you're relying on all the muscles to work together in conjunction, at the same time, so that you swim instead of sink. This puts HUGE amounts of stress on your shoulders. Even moreso if you are like me and absolutely ABHORE kicking.

This was a stroke flaw that I was never quite able to fix. For some reason, when I swim freestyle, I don't kick. I've always depended on my arms to pull me through, and I guess that's probably 90% of the reason that my shoulders have developed into the monstrosities that they are. But regardless, my absolute hatred of freestyle drove me to become a stroke girl, and I wound up being a decent breaststroker. I was never "great" but I always managed to hang right in the middle of the pack. Even up into college. So, my kick sets, always breaststroke, and what's funny is that my breaststroke kick is faster than most people's freestyle. What can I say? I guess I've always been unique! :P

So getting back in the pool felt in an odd way like coming home, but I still have a hard time enjoying it. I did it for so long, so that when the time came and I walked away, I walked away with few regrets. I do believe they call that BURNOUT. 6-22 plus some masters, that's a loooong time to do just one thing. But regardless, the pool still sort of feels like home. So, since I was already at the pool and didn't really feel like rushing up into Old Town to catch a CF class, I just decided to hop in. Here's how the breakdown went.

200 warm-up
200 stroke
8 X 50 kick @ 1:00
50 easy
8 X 25 underwater :15 seconds rest
8 X 50 free @ 1:00
8 X 50 breast @ 1:15
100 easy
4 x 100 IM's @ 2:15
100 easy

Total yardage: 2,550

In all honesty, the breaststroke stuff felt pretty good and so did the 50's free. By the end though, my shoulders were pretty fried. We did strict presses on Monday, and while I hit a PR I think I did manage to tweak my shoulder a bit. Jerry noticed that I have an extreme inbalance in my arms. I had the right arm almost locked before the left one went up and over. So clearly, there's something to be said for that. I think in doing that, I think I did a little tweaky tweaky that was further aggravated by the constant movement of my rotator cuff while swimming. But, for a spur of the moment wod, this wasn't bad. Heartrate was up for almost an hour and I got some decent yardage in. Maybe I'll swim again sometime soon.