Team Practice at Canada Games Pool

For most the season Hyack Masters (Burnaby) trains at Bonsor Pool. It’s a rather old six lane 25m pool but for us Master swimmers it’s plenty adequate unless too many of us show up for practice. But this long Easter weekend showing up became a problem because we weren’t booked for our normal Friday and Monday evenings – some sort of scheduling glitch apparently. Coach Brad was very apologetic about it, though obviously there was little he could do. He did, however, promise to see if he could arrange for us to swim instead at the Hyack’s main training facility at the Canada Games Pool. Friday evening I checked my email and discovered Brad had indeed succeeded in arranging a Saturday morning practice, and so the next morning about a half dozen of us showed up to put in some laps. Both Joe and Damien were there so we bloggers were well represented. Practice started out with a warm up and supplementary set:

Warm up: 12 x 25 reverse IM in sets of four split 2 sw/2 dr @ 0:45
200 K
First set (x 2): 4 x 100 fr @ 1:40
200 fr pull @ 3:10
50 choice sw @ 1:30

Joe was in good form swimming beside me in the next lane. On the 200 pulls we swam side-by-side, except that on each turn he’d pull a third to a half body length ahead. For the first 200 I closed the gap each time and finished just behind, but for the second 200 I decided to conserve my energies for the next set and ended seeing Joe finish a full two body lengths ahead. Reflecting on this I think my biggest problem is a tendency to flop over side-wise, rather than bringing my legs straight over a proper turn calls for, and consequently I lose a lot of momentum going into the wall (not to mention the problems with setting up for the push off). It’s a combination of laziness and a certain lack of flexibility. Damien noted the problem he’s had with turns was keeping hold of his pull buoy during the pull sets, which sounds as if he’s doing exactly the same thing as me and was experiencing the effects of his less-than-vertical flip forcing the buoy loose. After an easy 100 to rest for the main set we had a choice between a sprint or middle distance set. Damien and I went for doing the middle distance set in backstroke, while Joe went for the sprint set. No big surprise there. For me and Damien our choice meant our practice finished with:

Main set: 7 x 50 on 200m PB pace +2,+1, 0,-1,+2,+1, 0 @ 1:20
100 @ 2:30
3 x 50 on 200m PB pace +4,+2, 0 @ 1:00

Warm down: 200 fr (br 3/5 by 50) @ 4:00
200 non fr @ 4:00
200 choice

I started out well but found myself tiring towards the end of the main set. The shorter recovery at the end also had an impact, so by the time it came to swimming the 200 free breathing drill I was completely knackered and had to let Damien go ahead midway through. I finished up with a 200 back and left out the last 200 for a total distance of 3,000 meters. Damien finished the full practice – I'm going to be churlish and credit his efforts to the benefits of youth. All-in-all a pretty good work out, one I’d grade a 7.