Team Work in the Pool

This morning's swim was a good one. Some speed work and then it was the beef of the practice.

8x300 Draft Packs (Race Pace Swimming) Each person leads for 100m and then drafts for 200m while the other two take there pulls and you try to hang on.

After the first rep Neil mentioned something about teamwork...working as a team...but i didn't really take it in.

Next rep he harps on it again. That the three of you need to work together for each other to get the time down.

On the third rep again he tell's us this with the 40 seconds rest we have. And i think it is here where we realized the truth in it.

This was a big fatty set. 2400m of hard swimming. Establishing your role in the group was what was needed to get through the set and give you and your teammates the benefits from this speed endurance set.

So it was determined then that I would lead, set a strong solid pace for the 100m. Sharpie would take the second 100m and maintain that pace while already being fatigued from the first 100m, and then Brook would lay down the hammer and godsmack us both with the last 100m.

By rep 4 or 5 Neil saw that we were each taking our roles serious now and he was happier, even though our time was perhaps not to much fast as a group.

Draft pack swimming...an old NTC favourite that takes your swimming up a couple levels pretty quickly.

One sidenote: Brook's swimsuit is getting out of control. Two suits he wears, and it is the top one that is hanging on by what is 5 or 6 knots. The suit is ripped to shreds, but still hanging on. This reminds me when i was his age or so and a guy in my summer club, Marc Beaulieu , first popularized ripped suits on top of a good suit. It was cool, and fun to see how long that raggedly old suit could stay on with from the solid shots of chlorine it was subjected to. In the end we were banned from wearing ripped suits at the pool because the manager kept finding clumps on suit in the pump house, which were blocking pumps or pipes. Fun times