Even pulling back from scheduled training – dropping my weight program entirely and holding my meters to between fifteen and eighteen thousand a week, my sense of fatigue has only moderated rather than abated. I’m still always physically aware, especially when I move, but my muscle soreness has slowly changed into one of heaviness and lethargy. Rather like that comfortable feeling you discover waking up in the morning after a well deserved night’s sleep. But other than the need for longer and slower warm ups the overall quality of my swimming hasn’t deteriorated much. That is until a couple weeks ago when my top end speed seemed to disappear. I was trying to do 10 x 50 back on 0:50 at a pace matching my best 200 back and then follow it up with 3 x 200 easy backstrokes concentrating on technique and turns. Given my 200 back at the end of last season didn’t exactly set the world on fire I thought it was a reasonable speed + endurance set to build on. Yet I had to increase my interval up to a full minute after only the fourth rep, and switched over to the 200s a couple of fifties early as I was finding the effort far harder than anticipated. And from that date I’ve not been able to refind that zone where I can raise my stroke rate without putting in an inordinate amount of effort. It hasn’t helped I’ve had a low grade cold for the last three weeks, a sure sign of being over trained. In another classic sign Brad has had to correct flaws which should never need correction, and every time I was taking the ‘easy’ way in my stroke or kick. That gets embarrassing. My first swim meet of the season is in less than two weeks and I want to start off with some good times. I’m not admitting defeat in this, my third attempt to scale 30,000 meters a week, but I’m now setting up base camp at 18,000 before pushing on.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The Long, Slow Road Ahead
Even pulling back from scheduled training – dropping my weight program entirely and holding my meters to between fifteen and eighteen thousand a week, my sense of fatigue has only moderated rather than abated. I’m still always physically aware, especially when I move, but my muscle soreness has slowly changed into one of heaviness and lethargy. Rather like that comfortable feeling you discover waking up in the morning after a well deserved night’s sleep. But other than the need for longer and slower warm ups the overall quality of my swimming hasn’t deteriorated much. That is until a couple weeks ago when my top end speed seemed to disappear. I was trying to do 10 x 50 back on 0:50 at a pace matching my best 200 back and then follow it up with 3 x 200 easy backstrokes concentrating on technique and turns. Given my 200 back at the end of last season didn’t exactly set the world on fire I thought it was a reasonable speed + endurance set to build on. Yet I had to increase my interval up to a full minute after only the fourth rep, and switched over to the 200s a couple of fifties early as I was finding the effort far harder than anticipated. And from that date I’ve not been able to refind that zone where I can raise my stroke rate without putting in an inordinate amount of effort. It hasn’t helped I’ve had a low grade cold for the last three weeks, a sure sign of being over trained. In another classic sign Brad has had to correct flaws which should never need correction, and every time I was taking the ‘easy’ way in my stroke or kick. That gets embarrassing. My first swim meet of the season is in less than two weeks and I want to start off with some good times. I’m not admitting defeat in this, my third attempt to scale 30,000 meters a week, but I’m now setting up base camp at 18,000 before pushing on.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
1 comment:
Wow, I didn't know your mileage was that high. Good for you. If I swam that much, my wife would divorce me. Having said that, I'm going to try to add in some Sunday morning swims at CGP for the next few weeks.
Post a Comment