Pullbuoy timetrail barrier smashed

Whilst working with Julian in London I'd tried a few time to break 8:00minutes for a 400m set with the pullbuoy and whilst I'd come close a year ago I hadn't made clear gains on this over the previous year.

For the last month I've barely used the pullbuoy and have been focusing on the catch phase and have increased my pace remarkably for both single lengths and up to 1000m. Last night I thought I should be able to break the 8:00minute barrier now and today's swim seemed the perfect opportunity.

After a 200m warm-up I set to the trial trying to focus on the catch and hoping the pace would follow.  It was great to rest my legs. Anyway, at the end I could see from my watch that I'd done a great time:

There was some loss of pace towards the end of the set including one length below target pace with some excellent times in the middle the outcome was secure.

After this set really I'd done enough, my arms were tired and working without the pullbuoy felt laborious, but after such a great success the final few lengths weren't psychologically important.

February 2017 Week 5 CSS time trial

Today's swim was off the programme as I didn't have time for a long swim and shouldn't be doing fast intervals. So it seemed perfect to do a CSS time trial. That needs good effort for 400m and 200m. So it would be interesting go see if I could beat 8:00 minutes.

After the warm up I set off straight into the 400m with an excellent, possibly too fast pace. For the first 300m I was clearly faster than 2:00min/100m but then slowed. It didn't help that I lost track of lengths and so did 2 extra, which also meant that mentally I saved energy more than needed. The last 3 lengths were slow and so I completed in 8:00.5 minutes which is a personal best but still not better than 8:00 minutes!

After a brief a breather I did 200m in 3:58 minutes. Using the swimsmooth CSS calculator  I should aim to train at 2:01min/100m.

So for my long session the theory is that I should aim to include 1200m, across a few sets, at this pace to work close to lactate threshold.

Push harder!

After 14 weeks I returned to Acton for my review with Julian.  He was pleased with my general style on the warm-up but we were both disappointed with my performance on the 400m time trial. I've been hoping got break 8:00minutes and only managed 8:02minutes although my pace was better than 2:00min/100m to begin with.

After  much discussion it was clear that I'm not working hard enough in either my training sets or on the time trials with him. Apparently some will feel nauseous after giving it everything. I don't think that' in my character!

Anyway we tried again with single lengths of 25m and I managed to get down to 23s. Ok, that was a one off and quite different to 400m but it showed that I can go faster if I make the effort.  So we tried a 100m timed set and I managed 1:52minutes on that and I suspect I could have done more...

I was concerned about a loss of technique, too much splashing and so on but looking back over the video my techniques isn't all that much worse and I'm going so much faster. Looking back at my sets it seems that my need to keep going means that I'm too fatigued to work on the speed and I'm also not putting enough effort in to get to the power. I've been here several times with running! Basically I do have good low level aerobic ability but shy away from anything approaching anaerobic effort if I think I've got more to do.

Now I've a new programme including some focus on effort and I must take the breaks and go slow between the hard work to allow for recovery. I'll have to get my Tempo-Trainer out as one routine has specific pacing that seems unachievable at 1:54min/100m even though I've just done 1:52min/100m.

Week 1 is bound to be tough and I might not achieve the goals but experience suggests that I'll get there.

April 2016 Week 11 Session 2

This session showed a data error on the Garmin Swim which makes me wonder about the  accuracy of all of my previous swims! One set was recorded with a total time of just under 15 minutes and yet adding up the individual lengths it was closer to 18 minutes. Oddly, the watch knows that this is the case as the average pace of that set is shown correctly. The 'missing' time seems to have been allocated excessively to a 'rest' as there is now way that I stopped for over 2 minutes, in the same way that  800m in less than 15 minutes isn't going to happen in the next day or so.

On a more positive note I did manage 6 lengths at a pace better than 2:00min/100m and I didn't fade as much as I have previously at the end of the session.

Looking back it's great that today I managed all three 800m sets in under 18 minutes, corresponding to less than 9 minutes for 400m. This is distance for the time trials I've been doing and 1 year ago in August 2015 my time was 9:07 minutes. Today, in my final set, I beat that having already swum 2000m.

A quiet week

The pressures of work and general lethargy have made this a slack week. I've only managed 2 short runs and two runs. My resting heart rate has been raised 8% for weeks and I think this show a background of both physiological and emotional stress. In that regard a less intense week isn't a bad thing.

At the beginning of the week I made an effort to ice around my left ankle and I think I have recovered from that little irritation. Circuits was hard on my knees as usual and I persist in my hope that squats and lunges will eventually strengthen it.

Swimming early in the week was laborious and was a disappointment after the previous week's great pace. Today I worked to increase the effort within 400m sets and in the first few I mostly succeeded although by the 4th I was clearly tiring. My best consecutive lengths resulted in a sub-2:10min/100m for 100m including a single length at 2:02min/100m. Between weeks 5 and 8 I've taken over 20s off the 400m set time. That's not bad going for me. A sub-8minute 400m still seems a way off, although that is my goal for the next time trial with Julian.