IM taking liberty with Mr. Adams in Washington

29 September 2021

I flew down to Washington, DC later this afternoon for my first in-person conference, tomorrow, since the pandemic began. As it's focused on healthcare, the organizers are doing everything possible to ensure a COVID-safe event: vaccination proof required plus a negative COVID test plus masks during the event. The line up of speakers is impressive and I'm quite looking forward to it.

I happened to notice there was a fine looking pool with evening lap hours between DCA and my hotel**, so I popped in right at 6pm to this sweet high school/community pool, the Washington Liberty Aquatic Center in Arlington:

After three more intense days of training, I had originally planned on just doing a lighter, shorter swim, but I was both inspired by having my own lane and challenged (though not directly) by a set that fellow Masters swimmer James Adams had posted on Facebook in response to yesterday's post.

So, after my 'standard' 1,050 "short" warmup, I riffed on the 7 x 300 set that James had laid out, doing an IM variant in yards:

• #1 on 4:30, IM, swim-kick-drill by 25

• #2 on 4:20, IM, swim-kick-swim by 25

• #3 on 4:10, IM, all swim

• #4 on 4:00, Kind of IM, going 25 stroke, 25 free, 25 stroke for each 75

• #5 on 3:50, even less IM, going 25 stroke, 50 free

• #6 on 3:40, all free (was 3:30)

• #7 on 3:30, all free, make it (was 3:27)

I floated another 150 easy after that, took some photos and was done my 3,300 yards in a smidge over 50 minutes. That set was TOUGH. THANKS James for the idea!!

Oh ... and one other bonus as parking is very hard to come by at this facility: I pulled up just as someone pulled out of a spot that gave me the only open free parking:

** Meaning that I extensively searched https://www.swimmersguide.com/