I couldn't believe my swim...

I bought a new pair of shoes today. There was a wholesaler who was selling all their unsold inventory. There was some great deals. I ended up buying a pair of track shoes with no cushion on the heal. Although it came with cleats, I'm not going to use them. 

I'm going to experiment with these shoes to see if having no cushion on the heel helps simulate barefoot running. I'm not sure when I'm going to try them, but I'm going to try it eventually. I figured I couldn't go wrong because even if the don't work, they only cost me $20.

I got to the pool late and wasn't even sure if I wanted to a swim at all, but I pushed myself to do it and I'm glad I did. It was a speed session with lots of intervals. I decided to change my stroke slightly. I noticed on the Muskoka Triathlon video that during my warm up I swim with my fingers open. I've always done this because it feels more natural. This swim I decided to close my fingers and see if it would make much of a difference.

I was also reading Hans Winters blog and he was saying that his arms were sore during the swim. I've never had sore arms swimming. I think that is one of the reasons my swim is not that strong, I'm not prepared to go into the pain zone during the swim. I will go there on the bike and run, but not the swim.

The result of closing my fingers was the best swim session in my life by far. I did over 2000 meters of intervals and my fastest 100 meters was 1:31 and my slowest was 1:39, most where under the 1:35 range. Even during the easy warm up and warm down I was doing 1:43's. I couldn't believe it! 

Phycologically it told me that I can swim faster and I noticed my heart rate was much higher than normal. I may never do these times again, and this may have been a "fluke", but I was doing something right and it showed me I can swim faster. Needless to say, I'm going to start keeping my fingers closed.

I did 2500 meters but almost stopped at 2300 meters. I thought I was done and when I got out of the pool I realized I missed a set and was 200 meters short. I was already on the deck and had dried off and took about a minute to decide if I should just stay short or finish all the sets. I ended up jumping back in the pool and finishing the last 200 meters.

After the swim I did weights and felt pretty good, except the lunges were a little tough on the legs. After dinner, Alice and I went to Jamie's Grants place, sat in his back yard with his wife Barbara and had cocktails and cigars.

Speed Swim - 56:21 / 2500 meters

Weights - 40 minutes

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