Monday, November 1, 2010

Training in a New Swimming Pool

A new city, a new training plan.  This weekend's trip to Auckland necessitated a couple of tweaks to training.

Of a more minor nature was the need to take a day off work on Friday so I could do the 4 hour bike ride that was scheduled for Sunday.  More significantly was the need to make sure I could do a couple of swim sessions.  Dave had programmed a 1500m time trial (gulp!) for earlier in the week but when he found out the pool I was planning to use in the city of sails, he immediately said I should do the time trial in Auckland.

And the reason for that?  I had found that the closest pool to where we would be staying was the Olympic Pool in Newmarket, which is 50m in length. Dave was excited about the prospect as the great benefit of a 50m pool are the fewer stops and turns, and therefore less interruption to your swim stroke.

What swimmers will also tell you is that it does take a bit of adjusting to the doubling of distance between turns.  Intentional or not, each turn provides an opportunity for an extra large gulp of breath (my favourite!), an extra push off the end of the pool and the opportunity to mentally "reset" for the next length.

The marathon was on Sunday, so that was set as a rest day for me and I therefore jumped on a bus and headed to the pool on Saturday and also Monday for the time trial. 

I turned up on Saturday and surveyed the new surroundings.  It did indeed look quite a bit longer than I am used to and there was a lane on the far side which was being used by scuba divers.  What I also noticed, but didn't really pay any attention to, was that people in the lanes tended to be congregating at one end.  I didn't pay much attention to it as it's not overly unusual as there tends to a one end of a pool which is favoured as the start/finish point.  However this was significant and I would soon find out why.

So I jump in (at the popular end) and start on my first length.  I had sorted out a programme that used predominantly 50m sets rather than the typical 25m sets I had been following at Jellie Park.  That plan was soon to go out the window though.  The depth of the pool at the start was a friendly 1.1m and it gradually deepened to 1.5m at around 30m. 

At that point, though, it started to feel like I was swimming uphill...  It's amazing how the brain plays tricks on you, and the reason for this is that the bottom of the pool suddenly plummeted away from me, down to a depth of 4.4m.  And down in the depths were the scuba divers.  Of course there was no need to stay within their allocated lane down there, so they proceeded to blow big bubbles across the width of the pool - an interesting experience to swim over, that's for sure. 

Once I got to the end of the first length I found the reason that no one was congregating at that end.  Although the bottom of the pool did come back up at the far wall, it was still 2.7m deep and there was no ledge for resting on.  So there was no option but to push off and head back, and my session that day ended up having to be 100m sets.  Exhausting when you're not used to it!

The pool's website briefly mentions its history.  Apparently it once hosted the British Empire Games (now the Commonwealth Games) and, based on the floor profile, I guessed that diving towers must have been located at the extremely deep end rather than the current practice where a separate diving pool is built.  And indeed it does appear that this was the case.  A couple of photos held by the Auckland War Memorial Museum Library archives, taken in the 1950s, show that it used to be an outdoor pool and, indeed, the diving towers were at the end of the pool.

Back to my swim session, though, and getting used to the 100m sets was great practice. And it does make me look forward to the opening of Jellie Park's outdoor pool for summer, as that is also 50m long.  I'll be making full use of it as soon as it becomes available!

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