You Can't PR Every Day

...no matter how cool that would be! On Wednesday, I hooked up with a Masters' group that swims out of Scottsdale, AZ (near my work) for a lunchtime swim. After a standard warm-up...BAM...the coach says "1500 for time"....yuck! A 1500 is something that I kind of have to mentally prepare for. Within 30 seconds of the coach saying this, I was off on my swim. I had no expectations other than to complete the swim without falling apart. To my left was Lewis Elliot a local pro triathlete who was/is faster than me (100 over 1500 to be exact) and another life-long swimmer-type on my right (a couple of lengths faster than me over 1500). Great pacers to say the least. 19:40 later I was done. PR. 1:18/100y. Just two weeks back I did a 22:40, which I was satisfied with. I am trying to figure out how this happened. 1) I did not have anyone to pace off of two weeks ago, 2) The pool I swam at two weeks ago is more of a rec pool with lap lanes vs the pool I swam in a couple of days ago which is a pure lap pool, 3) My new stroke (catch and work the water back) is coming around. Whatever the case, a new bar has been set. The great thing is that it is only March and I know I can and will get faster. When I compare this swim to the swim I did with a different Masters' group in Mesa, AZ this morning (lots of 200s), I've come to the following conclusions: A) You can't PR every day. I felt sloppy and just flat out slow in the water today. This might be gross to some, but I was working so hard to over-compensate for my lack of form that I threw-up in my mouth after one of the 200s. This display leads me to B) Go to Masters with a plan. We've all been done it. You show up at Masters looking to get a "good swim", but end up throwing down just because. I did this same thing last year over and over again and it ended up leaving me too toasted to get anything else with quality done. Lesson learned!

On tap this weekend I'll be heading out early for a 80+ miles of hilly road riding with one of my local tri buddies, Mike Wares, who just qualified for Kona at IM New Zealand! He rocks. On Saturday I have a full day with a long trail run with zone 4/5+ intervals, a zone 2/3 MTB and a nice swim set with plenty of drills and a little variable speed work, nothing above tempo. Rock and roll.