Enough With the IMs, Coach!

Our Masters coach is absolutely obsessed with IMs!  For those of you who didn't catch this during the recent Olympics, IMs are Individual Medleys - Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Freestyle.

The last few weeks, both the Tuesday morning workouts and the extra workout she sends us later in the week, have been all about the IMs.  I actually appreciate getting some variety from our new coach, because our old coach was all about freestyle.  Which, I love freestyle, but I also like the chance to practice the other strokes.

Howver, every practice recently I feel like I'm dying by the end of it.  And I don't even have high yardage to show for it!  Butterfly and especially Breaststroke slow me waaaay down, so it really impacts the distance I can swim in an hour.

Here was our workout this morning (which I'm sure will only be interesting to other swimmers, so feel free to skip.  I'm including it to emphasize the IM insanity):

200 warm up

16 100's:
1. Fly - 50 kick, 50 drill
2. Back - 50 kick, 50 drill
3. Breast - 50 kick, 50 drill
4. Free - 50 kick, 50 drill
5. Fly - 50 drill, 50 swim
6. Back - 50 drill, 50 swim
7. Breast - 50 drill, 50 swim
8. Free  - 50 drill, 50 swim
9-16 - odds 100 IM, evens 100 free

10 50s with :10 rest
Odds: 50 IM (12.5 Fly, 12.5 Back, 12.5 Breast, 12.5 Free)
Evens: 50 Free

At that point I had to get out of the pool a little early to get to a work meeting, but you get the idea.  It's been like this with the IMs for about 3 weeks now.

FYI, Butterfly is hard, everyone.  HARD.  I am in awe of the Olympics swimmers who race Butterfly.  So after a 25 or 50 of that, I am beat.  THEN I'm expected to swim Breast, which I am SO SLOW at.  I'm not really sure why.  I focus on my technique and try really hard, but I am just achingly, frustratingly slow.

Confession: when the extra weekly practice includes Breaststroke, I usually substitute Fly or Back.  I can only handle being extremely frustrated once a week.

Tomorrow morning I will hit the pool with one of my old coach's workouts and I will revel in the Freestyle!