Of Swimming Bondage

I thought I was going to have enough time to do the full workout #4 as written from last week (http://forums.usms.org/showthread.ph...tart-April-4th), but I made the mistake of scheduling what was to have been a 15 minute call with our VP of Sales as I drove over to Westmoor Giammona pool this morning, figuring I would wrap that up right as the lap swim opened at 6am. Unfortunately, we talked longer - all good and valuable - and I didn't jump in until 6:20am. This, combined with the HS team taking up a few lanes, meant I had to share a lane and didn't have enough time. I had to ...

• Switch the transition fast efforts on the 8 x 50 into 16 x 25s as the lanes are too narrow to go fly for a 50 (e.g., I could time a fast 25 by pushing off right when the guy approached the wall, but would've whacked him hard if I did a whole 50).
• Shorten the intervals on the 100s and only got through 12 instead of 16

... but I still got in a solid 3K effort and felt pretty good. My backstroke, in particular felt great, and I got down to 1:03+ on the last hard effort there.

I haven't been training a lot of focused IM work even though I'm swimming both the 200 and 400 IM at Nationals. There are a few reasons for this. Primarily, I want to focus on the 1000 and 500. Secondarily, because of the OOE, the IMs fall late in the meet and I suspect I'll be a bit tuckered out by the time they come around. Finally, I've had some persistent groin issues which has limited my breaststroke kicking. Excuses aside, though, if I can manage to get my breaststroke kick in more than the passable state it's in now, I think I can at least throw down a low 4:20ish 400 IM, which would be nice ... but not required for happiness.