05/20/09 - lots of legs.

I rode my bike to the pool today, approximately a 15 minute ride. I wanted to do a lot of kicking and thought this would provide a good warmup. 3 minutes from my house, I realized I'd forgot my watch. My watch is nice to have but is not necessary, so I pedaled on.

After I got to the pool, though, I realized that neither my suit nor my goggles were in my bag. Crap-O-La. So I pedaled 15 minutes back to my house and again 15 minutes back to the pool. We'll call that dryland for today .

400 K/swim by 25 w/snorkel
8 x 50 scull/drill by 25 @15s rest

8 x 25 fly, odds drill, evens swim fast
I alternated btw 5 K/2 pull drill and 2 K @top/2 K @ bottom -- mostly to work on my timing.
went (14.7, 14.5, 14.7) on the fast ones

Test set: 3 x 300 @1:00 rest. Goal is to determine Anaerobic threshold. I went:
3:28.24 (1:07.52/2:20.72)
3:31.94 (1:07.9/1:11.29/1:12.75)
3:30.71 (1:08.83/1:12.00/1:09.88)

2 x 300 K @4:45 (4:42, 4:37)
4 x 75 K fast @1:30 (1:00.00, 59.85, 1:00.36, 59.76)

4 x 50 fr swim w/tennis shoes on @1:15.

warm down

Test set analysis:

I pulled the 3 x 3 test set from Salo and Riewald's Complete Conditioning for Swimming. The 300s are supposed to be swum fairly hard yet at a sustainable pace and your aerobic threshold pace is supposed to be your average 100 time across all 3. My average 100 time works out to be 1:10.1. I was hoping to average 1:09-low but the clock doesn't lie. My notes about this set:

* I missed turns on #2 and #3. #3 was particulaly ugly and I just barely got a toenail on the wall and almost stopped dead so I stopped my watch, turned around, went back to the wall, started my watch, and took off again.

* My splits were not great. I went out too fast on the first 2 and paid for it some. Probably would have been better taking those out easier.

* My head was all over the place. When I turned out to breathe, I was turning my head too far up. When I returned my head back to the water, I was rolling it all the way past center. I have to work on better discipline there and try to just let it turn with my body roll.

* My extension was ok, but not as streched out as it should be. I rarely felt like I was connecting my pull to my hip, which is how it feels when I get in a good rhythm for longer swims. I felt choppy.

I might try this set again next week and try to build the swims to see where that ends up. Of course, I'll have to ride my bike around for 45 minutes and then do the same in-water warmup to keep all of that constant .

Butterfly notes:
I watched the Eddie Reese on Butterfly video yesterday. That's where I grabbed the 5 K/2 pull and 2 K @top/2 K @ bottom drills. But, more useful than those drills was his comment on the underwater portion of the stroke.

He showed the long pull part under the body with the hands a lot closer together than I usually have them on my stroke. His hands were close enough to where "if you stuck your thumbs out, they would touch". I usually pull farther outside than that. So today I worked on bringing my hands in closer together on the press. It feels easier but smoother, more effective. Of course, I've only used it on 25s so far, so we'll see what the effect is when I do some longer fly swims.