Tuesday, September 18, 2012

My first real pool workout ....

Or as Coach Kyle likes to call it - Swim Practice.  Ugh, I've never been a big fan of pool swimming.  And when I do, I just go and I swim.  Plan calls for 2,000m, then I swim 80 lengths, 4,000m, 160 lengths.  You get the picture.

But alas, all those "other" swimmers - with all their fancy equipment (pull buoy, kick board, paddles and fins), doing their sets and stopping to chit chat during their rests - well they just annoyed me.  Sure they could swim circles around me, but really - is there such a need for all the complications.  It's just swimming right?  Seems to me they spend more time resting and chit chatting then swimming.  But darn it, they sure swim fast.

So, as you know, I started working with Coach Kyle in the endless pool at AE.  But now it's time for me to get in the pool (sadly open water swimming might be over for the season), and  get some data for him to see.  So today I'm going to do my first "swim practice" ever.  Here's the plan Coach Kyle sent me.... he calls it a Lactate Threshold Set - I think he gave it a fancy name to make me like it better.  Well, I don't!

Warm up:
100m easy
200m fast/easy by 25
200m drills
4x25m kick all out
100m pull
(I'll probably just swim 500 - 700m)

Set 1 (Lactate Threshold Set)
8x50m with 25s rest after each
6x50m with 20s rest
4x50m with 15s rest
2x50m with 10s rest
(I'm really going to try to nail this to get the metrics for swimming ability)

Set 2
4x100m at goal time, 30s rest
3 minute rest
400m for time
(again, I will try to nail this but I'll be tired by now I'm sure and I really don't know what my goal time is!)

200m warm down (doubtful this will happen)

Ok, so that just seems so complicated - but I'm going to give it a shot!  Truth is I know I can swim the nearly 4,000m for the Ironman.  And I know I can do it in about an hour, twenty.  I also know that no matter how much I practice, I'm probably only going to shave a few minutes off the swim and in the grand scheme of things ... well, what's a few minutes in a 14 hour long race?

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