Just had the most extraordinarily enjoyable and relaxing Monday night swim workout, after a pretty intense 36 hours of work that left me feeling near dead! I'm just in love with swimming recently, not sure what it is--some combination, I guess, of having found the right set of workouts and finding it challenging and stimulating but also something at which I can markedly improve.
I cannot promise accuracy in summing-up, but let's say what we did tonight was this...
(I was leading the lane, so I can remember it better than I might have otherwise! Actually I think this is exactly what we did.)
Warmup:
200 swim
200 kick with fins
Main set to cycle through:
50 kick on stomach (with fins)
50 kick on back (with fins)
200 pull (2 x 50 long dog paddle, 50 swim)
200 with fins (2 x right arm, left arm, reverse catch-up, swim)
8 x 25 (4 fast legs long arms, 4 "dead" legs fast arms)
(We did this set twice.)
Meanwhile:
Timed 500! (Yards not meters.)
This is baseline time to work from and improve. It was pretty unsteady pacing, but I felt kind of great throughout, I think I am going to have a better time on this soon--once I can keep steady.
The coach worked with 4 people at a time in the two lanes at the end. Here are my times--I like doing things like this, only unfortunately although I was counting accurately two of the others stopped after 18 lengths instead of 20 and so we don't have the time for the full 500! But let's say it's like this, and that all four of us swam rather similar times only one guy fading in the last 100, with these being the splits:
100 1:38 (fast!)
200 3:27
300 5:18
400 8:08
450 8:48
[500 let's say it would have been 9:35ish, we were going faster again at the end]
Frustrating not to have the exact time! I did a 9:42 in June, but in a 20-yard pool, so the push off the wall makes that faster--this is a definite improvement.
So there are multiple ways of working on this speed stuff from here, sounds like we'll be doing different things in coming weeks: on the one hand, try and regularly do 100s on a 1:45, which will be very challenging; on the other hand, try and hold 1:38 for 10 100s but on a 2:00 interval, i.e. with plenty of rest.
I am excited!
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3 comments:
Jenny, wonderful timed swim!
Pretty good, eh?!? Though I was having depressing thoughts about the slowness of my running in contrast to these folks' times, after idle lane chat--I must just be patient, and also reconcile myself to the fact that I am never going to get super-fast on the road!
One must also consider that while there will always be those faster, there will always be those slower as well.
And those who start on the slower side, are capable not just of making the greatest gains but of continuing to improve year over year. Those with great prowess in their youth must struggle to maintain.
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