New Swim Coach

Things at my masters team have been a bit disorganized lately.  Normally that would irritate the crap out of me and cause me to switch teams, but for whatever reason, I've been ok with it.  Probably because I've only been swimming for IMCDA recovery and some general fitness without any real goals.  And I do like the group and one of the coaches.  So the fact that the other coach would fail to show up or when she did show up, she would sit on a lounge chair and play on her phone the entire practice didn't really bother me.

They hired a new coach, who apparently gave up a "normal" job to be a full time swim coach and is straight out of college.  He's been in town literally 7 days.  He showed up to watch Monday's practice while the usual coach lead the workout.  I felt this was a bit of a test, as the last part of the main set was a ladder of IM (ie all 4 strokes).  We (the swimmers) were being tested (on the sly) on 1) who could swim all 4 strokes and 2) who was a whiner.  I think I passed both tests.

Wednesday was Scott's first workout.  It went like this:

• Warm up: 4x250 swim/kick/pull/swim 
• 10x50 golf (I was one of the few people who knew what this was - go me!) 
• 5x100 build 75% to 85% by 50 
• 6x50 golf 
• 3x100 build 85% to 95% by 50 

Then he suggested that we do a ONE MILE SWIM for time and we all laughed. That would have put our yardage at 4,000+ m.  And most of us had to be at work at 8 AM and doing a mile would have kept us in the water until a bit after 7 AM.  Still, I expect to see that one mile appear sometime in the very near future.

Today he was late and I know we were all wondering if he was going to be like our prior no-show coach.  Turns out his alarm didn't go off and he showed up after we all did a 500 warmup.  Today's workout was a bit of a doozy.  But I liked it.  A lot.

• 10 x 100 on 2:00 (remember, this is a meter pool).  1-5 build 75% to 85% by 50, 6-10 build 85% to 95% by 50 
• 8 x 50 descend 1-8 on 1:05
• 6 x 50 95% - rest consisted of enough time to touch the wall and turn around.  yay?
• and the "surprise": 4x50s all out on 2:00 to build lactic acid tolerance.

After that, people still wanted more and he was doling out tempo 500's.  I heard that and decided to do a 400 cool down and call it a day.

He did promise to up our distance to 3,200 m, which would consist of 30x100.  I told him that he and my tri coach would get along well.  (Michelle agreed with me).

Overall I'm a bit scared but I am excited.  He's a true swimmer and he's giving us collegiate level workouts.  The two that I've seen have required that you stay present and focused on your swimming, which I like.  I enjoy swimming smart and learning things.  I feel like that's been missing lately, as I've just been swimming to get distance and workouts done.

We'll see what this does to my overall speed - who knows, IMBoulder could be done on a 1:10.  That'd be pretty sweet.