Sunday, April 30, 2006

First "Long" Swim of the Season!

This is the first weekend of spring training in Dover Harbor - where channel swimming aspirants will begin to acclimate to swimming in cold water. The water temperature in Dover Harbor was 49F and everyone did two 15 minute swims on Saturday - I haven't heard yet about Sunday's swims.

In honor of this, I did the first "long" swim of my training for my one-way English Channel swim in July of 2007 - 4 miles in the ocean off of La Jolla. I've decided to ease into this gradually. The first two-mile lap from the Cove to the lifeguard tower at the Shores and back I did alone, and my fast-swimming friends Heather and Ruthy from the pool joined me for the second lap. Next time I will do it the other way around and start out with the girls and finish by myself. The sun came out during the second lap and the ocean temperature hovered around 58F - it's hard to call this "training" - we all agreed it was more like fun!!!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Starting the Long Ocean Swims Again

It's April now, and time to start long ocean swims again. The water temperature here in the La Jolla Cove is 60 degrees - perfect for training. My long swims will be from 6 - 12 miles and will be done on the weekends. During the week, I will do quality interval workouts in the pool with the JCC noon Masters Swimming group, some days with an ocean swim first. This year, I am training for the training.