There's a saying something like, "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then." Today, I feel like the blind squirrel.
After rearranging my workouts to better fit with the rest of life, I took yesterday as a rest day and did a swim/run workout, this morning. Something about the rest day worked for me, as the workout went very well. Perhaps it was time my shoulder needed to recover from playing dodgeball against the eighth graders at The Boys' Brigade. Perhaps it was the "decent" night's sleep (meaning neither child woke me up, and I actually slept in my BED the whole night). Maybe it was the free lasagna I had for dinner (leftovers from a work lunch).
Whatever it was, I had what is perhaps the best swim I've ever had. It was certainly the best swim I've had in a long time. It was a simple enough workout with a 300 yard warmup and 200 yard cooldown. The main set was 10x100 at T-pace - 5" on 20" rest. I've been throwing in at least one good speed workout each week in an effort to maintain my 2'/100 yard pace, or maybe even improve upon it.
I completed the warmup, and realized my pace was already 5" under my t-pace. That's usually a sure sign I'm going to blow up a few hundred yards into the main set, and require outside assistance by the cool down set. Needless to say, I wasn't overly confident going into the 100s.
The stars must be aligned properly, though, because I completed the entire main set with a pace of 1:51/100 yards. That doesn't beat my personal best 100 yards ever, but it definitely beats my best average pace over distance. And when I was able to complete the cool down set at a pace of 1:55/100, the first thing that came to mind was blind squirrels.
I don't expect to have days like this every day. But it gives me a great swim on which I can focus when it comes to races. It's good to know that I can complete most of an Olympic distance swim at a sub-2 minute pace. That would shave a lot of time of my prior best swims.
And now, I have to get back to looking for nuts. After all, blind squirrels only get lucky every so often.
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