Breaking Barriers

The Sunday morning swim has become a favourite of my husband and I.
First, it's morning! Finally a workout at a reasonable time of day!
Second, the pool is 50m (not the usual 25m). Bring on the endurance!
Third, it's usually pretty quiet, meaning we get the lane to ourselves.

I don't know what it was, but this morning I could not get my rhythm. Every breath I took had me swallowing lots of water along with it. My legs kept sinking and dragging my butt down and I felt more like a flopping fish than a swimmer.

650m in I decided maybe I was going too slow to keep my form. I picked up the pace which helped raise my legs up and finally found my rhythm. More or less. I was doing 300m/10min, meaning I was looking at doing a new PB of 1800m distance.l by the end of the hour.

But in the last 10min, that no longer felt good enough. It felt like I would fall short of 2k, rather than swim longer than 1700m (my previous PB).

So I pushed myself up a gear and started swimming a bit faster to get the distance done  before the clock ran out. At 9am I was at my final lap. The lifeguards at the other end of the pool warned me they were moving the bulkhead to shorten the pool length down to 25m.

"I just have 50m to go!" I pleaded and they waved me on. Success!

2000m, done and dusted. I've broken the 2k barrier and did it in 60min. Well, okay. More like 63 minutes. But still, won't be long until I've done it in sub-60!