06/10/08

LCM today.

100m Ez
8 x 50m @ :50
6 x 150m @ 2:10
12 x 50m @ :50 Ez/Mod/Fast by 50
100 mod @ 1:35
200 mod/fast @ 3:00 (I went ~2:40-45)
400 fast (I went 5:30)
6 x 50 kick @ 10 sec rest

3000m

I shortened up my stroke and shifted my focus to keeping a good tempo today. It felt good, and I was going faster with less effort, I felt. I'm exiting my hand sooner, and trying to think of "front quadrant" swimming the whole time. Taking my hand out sooner makes me a lot less tired because I think that I was extending too much and getting my stroke too long. The earlier exit is less powerful overall, to be sure, but I get less tired and it seems faster.

I think that part of the reason it seems faster is that I'm maintaining better forward momentum. With my longer stroke, I'm getting more power + distance per stroke, but I'm losing momentum. Every stroke, then, needs to overcome the momentum lost to get back up to momentum. The analogy I've come up with is biking uphill: I can put the bike in a higher gear and power my way up the hill with a lot fewer cycles, but with more power applied and much more fatigue. Or, I can put the bike in a lower gear and spin a lot more cycles to get up the hill with less fatigue.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with my performance today. My back still hurts, and doing flip turns made me grunt in the water because they're painful, but I was pumped that this higher tempo idea bore fruit so quickly. I'm going to have to wait a while to see if the faster swimming was a result of the 2 days I took off or because of the switch to tempo training.