Stormy Weather

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 6. 263 days to Olympic Trials!

Journal by Jeff Commings, Swimming World associate producer

Jeff Commings, who will be the second-oldest man to compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials next summer, is journaling his daily training regimen on his personal blog. We are reprinting those articles here:

Today's workout:

Time: 5:35 a.m.
Short Course Yards

600 warmup

18×50 on :50, 2 free, 1 non-free

Two rounds:
Three minutes swim, dive every 25
Three minutes scull
Three minutes kick
Three minutes swim
(Did 62 lengths total)

6×50 on 1:05, five wall pushups at the 25

Total: 3350 yards

This morning, the temperature was about 70 degrees, the wind was blowing quite strongly, and it even rained for about five minutes as we started the long main set. That made getting out and diving even more enjoyable! Pretty soon, it will be cool every morning, and it will be time to break out the parkas! The only bad thing — at least to me — is that the heaters are now going to be turned on in the pool, and that means goodbye to cool water! Until next spring (around April), the pool will likely be too hot for swimming. It always is, and I used to complain about it. I won't anymore. It not only reaches deaf ears, but it only increases my mental frustration and takes away from my concentration during workout.

I had to get out of workout early this morning to go to the dentist (clean bill of health!), so I made a point to get to the pool as early as possible to do some yards before 5:50. I think there was about 800 yards left in workout when I was done. The main set was fun to do, and I set a challenge to do a mile in 24 minutes. All that sculling and kicking made it difficult, and I wasn't going to speed up the sculling just to get the yards in. These types of "exercise" sets show up often on Thursdays, and I like them because they break up the monotony of swimming back and forth, though getting out of the pool for dives doesn't get easier when you get older!

Since this is Thursday, I was planning on swimming with Coley Stickels' group at Phoenix Swim Club this afternoon, but I had errands to run today that needed to be done before I went to Tucson this weekend. Next week, I will definitely swim with Coley's group on Thursday to get some more breaststroke work done. In November, I'll switch to his Wednesday workouts for sprinting.

Reprinted from Jeff's personal blog at commings.blogspot.com.

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