23th July 2009 Thursday - 2nd Semester; 5th YF Swim

I got a SMS from Coach David yesterday morning, and this was his exact word:-" Try to move away frm fri, good 4u. u can b faster".

Coach has encouraged me to "upgrade" to other faster classes since end of last semester; early June because he felt that I have improved. That time I told him that I was still not ready to go away from Friday class, apparently Friday were for slower swimmer or beginner and we concentrate more on stroke technique as we were doing a lot of drill. I felt I still need to further improve my stroke technique and coordination of fluttered kick with stroke; before I proceed to muscular endurane long swim. I explained this to Coach when new semester started on 26th June and he accomodated my request. I stayed on 4 more Friday classes since the semester started, and lately I knew I was ready to move. His message came timely. I responded to his SMS that I would move to Thursday class.

Tonight I was initially put on lane 2 (lane 1 and 2 being the slower lane, lane 3 and 4 were faster lane with stronger swimmers). After the usual few 100m of drill, Coach moved me to Lane 3, 8th swimmer before our long swim started.

Our Long swim consisted of :-
2 x (200m, 100m, 200m, 100m, 200m, 100m, 100m - 20laps) Wow, cool, my first's attempt to swim FC beyond 10 laps without long break (we stopped 15 to 30 sec in between). I did pretty well;

1st set
200m-4.34min, 100m-2.16min, 200m-4.43min, 100m-2.19min, 200m-4.36min, 100m-2.14min, 100m-2.16min ( 20 laps - effective swim time = approx 23min)

2nd set (I was stopped by the coach after my initial 600m to skip the next 200m and take some rest, before I continue my reminder 2 x 100m. He told me that I needed rest as my stroke started to get a little haywire and no point to continue if I could not focus on the right stroke technique when tired)

Timing for my 600m :- 200m-4.37min, 100m-2.20min, 200m-4.51min, 100m-2.22min ( 12 laps - effective timing = approx 14min)

Rested approx 4.5min ( 200m swim) before I continued to do the reminder 2 x100m.

We ended our training with 4 x 50m sprint. Ave sprint timing 58sec to 63 sec.

Looking at tonight's timing, I could swim 30 laps below 40min, the bench mark trial timing to qualify for Singapore Biathlon. I did 32 laps at 37min and if taking into account my effective rest time as 5 min for the 32 laps, then my timing would be 42min.

Tonight swim had given me a lot of confidence and morale for more muscular endurance swim. Tonight swim had also signified I can achieve my goal which is to swim 30 laps below 40min. I set this goal when join YF class and target to achieve it by end of 2nd semester. More importantly I have improved and moved away from Friday class, cool man!!!
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