The Dreaded 1-hour Swim...Complete!

Hey there!

This morning, I participated in the nation wide one-hour swim competition. A competition for distance, this swim was a great way for me to gauge my improvement over the last year.


I began swimming with the Bruin masters program in September of 2008 and a few months after the fact, I participated in my first 1-hour swim, hitting the wall at 4,000 yards on the nose (equates to 1:30 per 100yd average). Today, one year later, I hit the wall at 4,810 yards which equated to an average of basically 1:15 per 100yd. I was more than elated with my result! I have worked so hard over the last 15 months and it has completely paid off.

Going into today's swim, my goal was 1:15s or 4,800 yards, however I thought that that might have been a bit of an ambitious goal. This is especially due to the fact that I had missed some crucial longer set workouts during the first three weeks of January while I was racing in South America. With that being said, my result is a testament to my swimming fitness and I couldn't be more pleased!


The swim itself went relatively smoothly up until the 35th minute, where it then got pretty interesting...

At that point, my goggles completely filled up with water (I'm talking 100%) and I could no longer see the two pool-side clocks that I was using to pace myself. It was so bad that I didn't know where the walls were until I was within two strokes from them! While it seemed like having to endure this annoyance for 25 more minutes was a total disaster, it actually wound up being a blessing in disguise. Instead of dwelling too much on my pacing, it forced me to lower my head and continue ticking off the yardage.

I was able to see the "10 minutes left" sign and figured if I swam my 1:15s, I could get 800 in during that time. Sure enough, I was able to get 860 yards in and finished on a good note!

While I was very excited about having met my goal, the best part about that hour was being able to rip my goggles off after 25 minutes of torture!

I wanted to thank my fellow Bruin masters members for kicking my butt all over the UCLA pools for the last 15 months, for if not for them I'd still be swimming doggy paddle!!

That's all for now. Check back later for more training updates!

Thanks again. Talk soon!

-H