Today was another double workout day.  I got up early and did my tempo run before work, and after work, I went to the lake to do my swim session.

My swim session was a typical “pool interval set”, that included multiple 25 yard and 50 yard intervals at different paces.  As I mentioned above however, I did the swim at the lake.  My pool is still closed due to the pandemic, so if I want to swim, I need to do it at the lake.

To make sure I knew what I was supposed to do, I wrote the interval sets on the back of my hand with a marker pen.  My challenges didn’t end there however.  There are no distance markers at the lake, so how would I know when I had completed the prescribed 25 or 50 yards?  The truth is that I wouldn’t know, but I could estimate the distance, and then use another method to try and consistently swim a standard distance on the interval.

The method to use when doing intervals in open water, is to count strokes.  It’s not perfect in terms of distance, but it enables you to swim fairly consistent intervals.  Tonight I chose to make my “25 Yard” swim equal to 18 strokes (18 repeats on the same arm) and my “50 Yard” interval, equal to 36 strokes. 

It’s the first time I have tried this counting strokes method and it worked quite well.  I consistently ended up at the same place on the swim area buoy line, and the times for each interval, were close to each other.

All in all, I was pleased with the swim, even if I had forgotten how hard the 12 x 50 fast pace intervals, on 20 seconds rest, were.  I was gassed at the end of that set.