Saturday’s Workout

Still more training changes from my lessons learned at the UBC meet. Up to now I’ve been fairly casual about my extra workouts, looking more to simply add more training kilometers and consequently improve my overall conditioning (my ‘base’). The UBC debacle has clearly shown if I’m to improve sufficiently to race anything beyond fifty meters I have to raise the overall pace of all my workouts to over 80% of max, not just my Hyack practices. To achieve this I’m going to adhere more closely to given intervals and not just add more time when I’m out of breath, falling back on the excuse I simply set too fast an interval time. No more.In another resolution I intend to increase distance in my personal workouts over the next month to between 2,500 and 3,000 meters per practice and so work harder on my endurance. As a consequence for this morning I gave myself the following workout to do:

Warm up: 200 free concentrating on technique
200 IM kick w/fins
200 free w/paddles
Main set: 4x50 fly w/fins on 1:30
100 kick (50 dolphin & 50 flutter kick on back) on 3:00
6x50 breast on 1:30
100 breast kick on 3:00
6x50 back on 1:20
100 back flutter kick on 3:00
8x50 free on 1:00
100 kick (50 dolphin & 50 flutter kick w/board) on 3:00
Warm down: 200 free breathing 5/7 on alternate 50

2,400 meters in total, plus this workout has a lot of kicking in it (at least for me)! Fly went as expected, the first 50 going smoothly and my last leaving me wheezing and weak armed barely able to keep them out of the water on the return. I only need to look at my pictures to see how much muscle mass I’ve lost due to my back injury; it’ll take a few more months just to gain sufficient strength to complete a 100 fly so I grudgingly accept my failings for now. My breaststroke times are horrible – no wonder it’s my least competitive stroke, but there’s no reason for it to be this bad. First thing to give were my legs. Thankfully backstroke followed and went pretty well. My rollover turns continue to improve so I’m gaining some confidence I’ll do better with them in Nanaimo. I think next time I do 50 back sets I’ll drop the interval down to 1:15. Free came next, and if I was thinking before practice a full minute interval for a fifty was being generous I wasn’t by the time I actually started and mid way through the set found myself leaving before having fully recovered from the last run. The warm down with its restricted breathing really messed me up, as I needed a 30 second rest after the first 100 to continue, and eventually giving up and going back to breathing every other stroke on my final lap. Yet another problem I’ll have deal with by scheduling additional breathing drills into my program. Practice rating: 7/10