Strava 2018

Well it has to be done, here's my Strava movie for 2018. I'm basically happy with 1000km running but it would have been great to have reached a cumulative 1000miles.

Flat walking

Just before Christmas I took delivery of Vivobarefoot Magna firmground boots for use commuting and on easy hikes. The reviews were mixed, especially regarding the stiff heel counter and tight ankle.

I can't say that I've had problems with either. I've gradually upped the distance I've walked in them an have now managed 16km and 22km in them, albeit on easy level ground. My left heel is slightly sore but nothing much - I think there is more to do with a heel  strike habit more than the zero drop. Interestingly I had no problems with some running intervals yesterday evening so can't be anything severe.

Looking at stroke rate

Much earlier in the year I was trying to increase my stroke rate to gain some speed. My arm turnover is slow and may well be associated with a drawn-out glide phase. So today I tried sets at 64, 65 and 66SPM hoping to get some good times, I remembered 66SPM being a good rate for me. I got a good workout but unfortunately the pace didn't improve. Even my first set at 65SPM was at a below normal pace. This suggest quite strongly that the  stroke rate was too high for me to be effective.

Some final sets with bilateral breathing and a standard pullbuoy with a greater tempo were disappointing too.

Looking back to April 2018 it seems that 62SPM is closer to my ideal turnover than 66SPM, I'd remembered incorrectly, even from earlier in the month...

It's also possible that I'm tired, yesterday's run was the slowest I've ever done for that regular route.

HRM-tri battery swap

On today's run a message popped up on my watch that the Heart Rate Monitor battery was low. It may well be linked to the cold weather but clearly it must be past its best. Luckily I keep a stock of CR2032 3V batteries in stock. There's a YouTube video of the process if, like me, you're not sure where the instructions are at home:

Note the the official instructions include a few extra tips.

Stroke rate

For a change I swam 3 sets with the ToyBuoy at 62, 64 and 66SPM. Previously 64SPM seemed about right, and it did today again as at 66SPM my pace dropped and the SPL increased. I felt to manage the arm turnover OK so the potential is there. Even 64SPM is faster cadence than usual and did give a slight boost to pace and uniformity so is a good point to work at currently.

Unexpected pace

I wondered today how I'd do over 200m with the ToyBuoy with RHS breathing. I'd expected to be just over 4 minutes as a while ago I'd cracked the 8 minutes for 400m with the BigBuoy. Strangely it took 4:25minutes which was a little disappointing and my SPL increased alarmingly. Basically back to the old more effort and less speed.

So, onto the main set of just over 1100m with tidy controlled bilateral breathing but aided by the ToyBuoy. For this I was pleased to record 2:12min/100m average with a fairly uniform pacing. The SPL rose from 21 to 23. Importantly these results show that with the ToyBuoy I seem to achieve a similar pace with bilateral breathing, focussing, than I do with RHS breathing whilst rushing.

Back to the spike

It was in 2016 that spike sets last featured in my routine but today it felt to be the right thing to do. Actually it wasn't. I didn't want to swim for much over 30 minutes so started with 8 recovery lengths (so the sequence would be 8+2, 6+2, 4+2, 2+2, 2 cool down) giving a total of 1000m. My plan was to do as many of the recovery lengths as possible with bilateral breathing.

Quite early in the session I could tell that I was still tired from yesterday's swim. The 'fast' lengths were terrible at 2:20min/100m at best! For the recovery lengths I couldn't maintain the bilateral breathing even at a slow 2:40min/100m and ended up pausing in a few sets.

Anyway, I completed back-to-back swims again and put some effort in for both.