26 February 2025
En route from Lisbon to Carvoeiro we took as much of the scenic, backroads route as possible, which was great when we found this mom & pop restaurant (Adega de Sines) in the seaside town of Sines. This is the kind of place where you walk in, they tell you they have a fish lunch and a chicken lunch ... but we missed the part about the chicken option ... and the husband says, "You will have the fish" so we go with it and have an excellent, deeply satisfying meal.
The winding backroads which switchback up and down hills south of Sines, though, were not so good for anyone who gets car sick, so my wife will advise you to take the highway.
After getting situated on Monday, I decided to check out the nearest pool in the town of Lagoa, less than a 15 minute drive from where we were staying. Tank-wise, this was a newer and nicer pool than the CNN pool in Lisbon, though only six lanes. Value-wise, this was a steal - €3 entry fee - and, after I found a similar 1-2 swimmer per lane scenario as on Tuesday, I went back here on Wednesday as well, notching 4,000 meter workouts on each day. This was clean, well-maintained and the combination of the colourful bleachers with the sun light streaming in from the windows made for a great swimming spot.
Tuesday's main set was my go-to Broken Mile set, done as 3 rounds of:
3 x 50: on 0:50
2 x 100: on 1:35
1 x 150: on 2:20
... except that I somehow spaced out on the first round and did "yards intervals" of 0:45, 1:25, 2:05. I was 36/37s on the 50s and 1:13/14s on the 100s, then descended the 150s 1:54, 1:51, 1:47.
When I arrived on Wednesday morning, a Masters team was just finishing. One of the women approached me and told me I should come back next week to swim with them, which I would have loved to do ... except that, by then, I'll be back to "working man" mode instead of "holiday man." For my main set, I stuck with a freestyle focus and improved on my recurring "ZipFizz 200s" set:
5 x 200: on 2:40, started at 2:29 and got down to 2:27 on the last one
4 x 50: recovery on 0:50, 1:00, 1:10, 1:30
3 x 200: on 2:55, descend, went 2:35, 2:28, 2:25
4 x 50: recovery on 0:50, 1:00, 1:10, 1:30
1 x 200: FAST - was 2:21
Parking was easy, the entry desk lady graciously accepted my feeble attempts to speak Portguese (and then she switched to English) and I had two great workouts for less than the price of one back home in London. What's not to love about Portugal?
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