Just a mere week after hitting a major milestone of swimming 1500m without stopping, I managed to up that to swimming 2000m without stopping yesterday. This carries a lot of significance as the swim portion of the Ironman 70.3 is 1900m and knowing I can do 2000m this early in my preparation is a great confidence booster.
In my blog entry a week ago, I mentioned I was hoping to swim 2000m, with breaks, by the end of November and swimming it continuously by the year. So much for shattering my goals! I didn’t start off the week trying to do this, but on Monday I did my swim and like last week, I swam 1500m again without stopping. I felt good afterwards and was sure I could have swam more, but mentally, I had 1500m in my mind and I stopped at that point. Tuesday I swam with a single break. When heading out to go swimming on Thursday, I knew I was going to sleep in on Friday and so I could swim a bit longer and not have to worry about getting to bed, but even then, I was only planning to swim 2000m with some breaks. But as I swam more and more and coaxed myself into going just a couple more hundred meters at a time, and then once I got to 1500m, I figured I had to go all the way. I did it in a touch over 56 mins.
I’m not breaking any speed records, but if I can swim at the same pace for the Ironman 70.3, I would come in well under the cutoff of 1 hr 10 mins.
So my milestones thus fare are:
- Sep 25 – Swam 500m
- Oct 3 – Swam 1000m
- Oct 26 – Swam 1500m
- Nov 1 – Swam 2000m
I don’t have any more distance milestones until after my Ironman 70.3. My milestones will now be based on speed and pace.