Diana Nyad Inspires Me to Set 2 Personal Bests!

“@diananyad: "People always ask me What's the hardest part? By far, without a doubt, it's the moment before embarking.” via @OtherShoreMovie
— Alison Gold (@AKGold11) August 31, 2013

Yesterday I watched Diana Nyad complete an extraordinary challenge.  In her fifth attempt, she swam the 110 miles of the Florida Straits from Cuba to Key West in ~52 hours of non-stop swimming. It was the longest open water swim ever done without a shark cage. On Twitter and her blog she received congratulations messages from Olympic gold medal winning swimmers and famous actors, "regular" people and the President of the United States.

She was greeted by 100s of people at the beach at Key West and many television cameras.  Despite her exhaustion and sunburn and chafed skin and lips she said, "I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you never are too old to chase your dreams. And three is, it looks like a solitary sport but it's a team."

Diana Nyad Florida Straits Swim Tracker.

About an hour later, I headed to the pool for the first time in more than a week.  Buzzing from having watched the live footage of Nyad's accomplishment, and anxious to see what the time out of the pool and on the hiking trails would do to my swimming, I decided to log some yardage.

My Labor Day workout:

Warm up:
200 free
100 drill (alternating 25 fingertip drill/25 catch up)
200 free

Main Set:
2x1650

Warm Down:
100 free
50 breast
50 back
100 free

I was pretty shocked when I checked my Poolmate watch for my time on my first 200.  I felt like my body was rotating well and I was really "feeling the water."  But, 3:34 was an 8 second drop on my previous personal best and I wasn't trying to go fast.  Then I managed a 3:35 on the second warm up 200. 

I was hoping that I could also log a new personal best in the 1650 free, also known as the swimmer's mile.  My previous best was 32:01 from back in May.  And because I have been working on distance per stroke and technique, I've logged a lot of slower swims in the last couple of months.  But, I also know that in the last couple of weeks, the tweaks to my stroke had started to click, and the strength training and open water practice were helping me move more water.

Even with a week out of the water, I was fast and feeling good.  Similar to what I experienced when I logged my new personal best in the 1000, both my 1650s were better than my previous personal best!  The second was 31:50, which was a respectable 12 second drop from my previous record.  Especially since I had already swum another mile set just 2 minutes before that one.  But the first set was a doozie:

  It was a 1 minute and 50 second drop!  I was so excited I had to let Diana Nyad know:

.@diananyad was my inspriration in the pool today & I dropped 1:50 on my swimmer's mile! #xtremedream #teamgoldfish pic.twitter.com/c0V9cc42jE
— Alison Gold (@AKGold11) September 2, 2013

And despite the fact I mispelled inspiration, her team retweeted it! A great way to head into the final three weeks of training before the big swim!