I swam with Bridget and Micah at noon. Bridget made me go faster.
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total distance: 1600m
I'm getting slow. I need to do sprints tomorrow.
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total distance: 1700m
There are a bunch of concepts at play when training. Efficiency, for one, is painfully obvious but maybe not so easy to describe. That's what kinesiologists are for. As a recreational or amateur athlete, I just need to know it when I see it. Like today. Time is always important to me in the pool, so I was a little bummed to see my slowest time ever for a 1000m free. 18:35 is almost 5 seconds slower than the first day I swam it, in years anyway, 4 weeks ago. My goal is to get this time under 17:30. So, I consider the swim - how I felt and what I was focused on. I'm trying to gauge intensity and form. And my intensity was low, significantly lower than any previous swim at this distance. Form felt much better. Four weeks ago my intensity was almost unbearably high. I've relaxed a bunch, smoothed out my stroke and slid in to an intensity level I can maintain almost indefinitely. To roughly quantify, I would say I've decreased intensity 20% for a decrease in speed less than 2%. Speed is the goal, but efficiency is necessary. As much as I hate to have a slow day, I should be happy with the improved efficiency. I'm confident that on a more intense day I will see a dramatic speed increase.
If you want to change intensity, find a new perspective. Intensity is a psychological concept. While physical efficiency, the result of focused technique, happens unknowingly, intensity is a measure of your conscious effort. And it's stressful. Most folks avoid high intensity training, and as a result define their performance ceiling at a point far below their physical potential. Those that push themselves above this median pay a psychological toll to see great performance. Accomplishing an athletic goal is rewarding but the day-to-day stress of intense training can make one crazy. I believe this is why many of the athletes I respect seem a little off. The point is, it's hard work that you have to make sense of in your head. Here's where the principle of periodized training is most useful, I feel. It forces you to take a new perspective, sneaking in a little more effort than you would have otherwise chosen to exert. The effect is cumulative, resulting in a pronounced increase at the end of the periodized regimen, most likely months. Conversely, if you can show up to the pool or the weight room or whatever, lay it all out every day with little variation to your program and see steady gains, then do that. If you're like most of us and you inadvertently hit a plateau, change things up. If you're still stuck, change it more. It impresses me how much variation I need to incorporate in to my routine to see a measurable change. If I'm bench pressing and 315 lbs feels heavy, I might rack 405 lbs and do a negative. I'm telling myself: 'You think this is heavy? Try this.' The same principle is useful in the pool. I'm starting to think 1000m is far. It's probably time to swim a 2000m freestyle. After taking away the intimidation I feel with my goal distance, I will be more comfortable pushing harder for the duration of the event. The thing is, 2000m will massively suck. Whatever - it has to be done because I'm not here to suck for forever.
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I thought I'd do a little butterfly today.
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total distance: 800m
I did some 200m freestyle today, on the 4:00, trying to find a good pace for my 1000m free on Monday. My last 200 of the set was good. I'm almost at the point where I've pushed hard enough to force my body to adapt to the fatigue with a more efficient stroke. Near the end of this set I concentrated on keeping my leading arm out longer, elbows high, and catching closer to my lead arm. Despite how tired I was it was easier and faster. And that's the point.
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There is an art to pacing oneself. My focus in the pool now is to bring my 1000m time under 17:30. That puts my average 100m split at 1:45, a non-trivial time for me at this stage. And this is long course, which is kicking my ass. But that's good. This is a good opportunity to think about pace. Today's pool session focused on this set: 10 x 100m @ 2:00. My thinking here was that I would focus on finishing each 100m just under 1:45. And I did, except the fist couple. Something I've forgotten since high school swimming seems to be that one should not go out fast. My fist 100m was just under 1:35, the next just under 1:40, and the next five or six 100s at almost 1:45. That's a fast start, not my trademark, and really not a smart way to race. So the challenge seems to be this: find a pace regardless of energy level. You will feel good at the start, obviously, but know what 1:45 feels like when fresh, when tired, and when dying. I'd actually prefer to go out slow. That's really the way to race, I feel. Staying behind, keeping other racers close, then running them down near the end is the rad thing to do. And I better get this pace thing under control - my birthday challenge for next year may be a 1000m at 15:00.
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total distance: 1500m
1000m swims are kinda hard for me. They hurt and I didn't really feel like hurting this morning. So, I did my 1000m at a somewhat pedestrian pace. Or so it felt. In reality, my time was 5 seconds slower than last Monday, and almost 25 seconds faster than the previous Monday. Two weeks ago was my fist time in years trying a 1000m for time so maybe that isn't so significant. What I feel happened is I'm generally in better shape for this distance after a couple weeks, kicked the intensity down maybe 5% today and sacrificed about one-half of 1% in performance. Sure, I would like to have bettered my time this morning but I feel there is something to be gained at varying intensity like this. I concentrated on my stroke and became more comfortable at this, a distance that until now was very much not comfortable. As with all sports, my theory goes anyway, pushing your limit has to be fun. If you're miserable, you won't push yourself day after day. It takes tons of time, but finding the limit of your performance envelope and consistently bumping up against it can be meaningful and really is necessary for improvement. To put in the time it takes to see big improvement better be fun for you or there's gonna be a lot of misery.
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total distance: 1600m
Swimming was pretty good today. I concentrated on finding a good rythm in my freestyle.
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I don't know what happened this morning. I just wanted to swim hard for some reason. Clearly, I didn't want to swim fast. Just hard. For the first time in a while I had to stop before something, maybe bad, happened. Or should I say, before having an epiphany in the pool, before breaking in to a realm of enlightenment. I don't know, but I can tell you my face was so friggin hot I was glad to be in the water just so I could cool it down and my back is on the verge of a record-breaking cramp-athon. Honestly, I could have puked. And that would be embarrassing in Los Banos del Mar. Not to say I haven't puked in a pool before. I have. Just not that pool. I don't think they're ready for that.
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So, at least I counted right today. I'm able to record a time for 1000m instead of 900m. Things felt OK. A straight 1000m freestyle is kinda hard for me so just to get through it is good, let alone record a better time than last week. I would like to get my time down to 17:30 fairly soon, making 100m splits 1:45 on average. In the more distant future, this should be 1:30 splits, coming in at 15:00 for 1000m. That seems respectable.
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I didn't feel ultra-good this morning. Things were just OK. I'm nursing this shoulder thing and generally did not have the Eye of the Tiger for the straight 1000m freestyle I had scheduled for today. And stupidly, I lost count and ended up doing a 900m free instead. So, I'm not counting today. It used to be if I lost count I would start over, counting that is, not the swim. My punishment this time: do it again tomorrow. And try not to fuck it up this time.
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I must be spent from the last 2 mornings of swimming. Getting out of bed today was easy and everything was coming together for what I expected would be a great session in the pool. Wrong. Energy was low, my left shoulder hurt, and I just could not get things moving. The previous 2 days' swims were kinda intense so this maybe should not come as a complete shock. Today turned in to a focus on fly kick drill, which actually went well.
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total distance: 1300m
This week's theme is distance. Yesterday, 1000m straight. Today, the dreaded 400/300/200/100 pyramid I "loved" from short course yards. Porting short course workouts over to long course is good, I feel. That is, it's hard. And hard workouts make for good fitness. Today's set did not disappoint. It hurt and I'm happy to have finished the thing.
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It's been kind of a lot of years since I swam 1000m straight. It hasn't gotten easier.
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