Fourth Major Swimming Milestone

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.