boo-yay with the flip turns

Swim: 45 minutes, warm-up 100 meters; 50 pull; 5x100 w/ 1.5 m rest intervals; 6x50 working on breathing and form; 100 cool down

Oh my friends - spring is coming. I know because I wake up in the morning and think, "oh fantastic. it's so beautiful" a marked change from February where I usually woke up thinking, "f*&% off, world."

So I'm not going to lie to you - in all this spring fevor - I rocked the pool the last night. When I was there on Monday, I talked to the masters swim coach and he suggested that to join the team practices (a grueling 90 minutes of coached drill swimming), I should be able to swim about 10x100's -- basically back to back. This was good to know (in a scary way) because now I have a goal. Having found out on Monday that my first 100 wasn't all that scary, I was detirmined to try a couple of them. So I did.

Here's the best thing about swimming 100's: They much easier to count. In fact, I think you could say that I'm acutely aware of where I am as I come fighting down home stretch on my last 25 - trying to hold on to breathing every other stroke.

Right around 7:30 two other girls jumped in my lane (bring us to a total of 4) - I took one look at these people and was like, "oh for god's sake". One was wearing a bikini. The other one was wearing a bug-green neon bathsuit and had about four feet of hair and no swim cap. Well, that will teach me. Bikini swam breast stroke, but the neon green suit got in and just started ripping the lane apart. No breaks. No rests. Just flip turn after flip turn - and she was fast. So I thought about something I had read about on another triathlete's blog - it's about how you can draft on faster swimmers, which challenges you to keep up, but at the same time, makes it easier to try another pace because you get a pull by being in their wake. So she came through, flipping and pushing off in about 3 seconds, I dropped in behind her and went along for the ride. It was great. I kept my fingers in the bubble trail from her kick and we went zipping down to the other end of the pool and back again, then up and back. Then I dropped out for a lap to rest and when she came back through, hopped on again. It was a fantastic workout. It was also a lot of fun (for me anyway - I bet she never noticed). Before I even knew it the master's team was standing on the deck and it was 8:00pm.

I was so happy with my workout (and kind of sad it was over), so I thought I would walk down to the store and get a frozen yogurt to celebrate. I think I ended up with soft serve ice cream, but it was delicious and made me feel - wandering back to my car still wearing my swimming suit under my fleece - that it was really really spring.