Tick tock

So, turns out I was kind of wrong yesterday, the day at work today wasn't really any easier and I still finished the day absolutely stuffed. Given that I am particularly happy with myself for managing to
 get down to the pool this afternoon.

Today has been the first day of having two sessions in one day for a while. This morning I had a bit of a run and tonight it was down to the pool. Probably fair to say that the run this morning went better than expected. That isn't to say it went well, but better than I thought it might.

The swim this afternoon was just plain tough. Mainly because of this.

As you may gather from the big writing on the pack, this is a Finis Tempo Trainer. If you read this blog regularly you may recall me talking about them in the past, since we use them at swim training all the time. Well I finally thought I would bite the bullet and get one for myself, for use on days like today when I was swimming by myself.

What do they do I hear you ask? Well to put it briefly, they beep. If you put it in your swim cap (it is waterproof), you can hear the beep. The trick is though that you can control how often they beep. Doing this allows you to use them in a number of nifty ways. Firstly you can have it beep really quickly and use it to set a tempo for your stroke rate (hence the name Tempo Trainer). We have used them like this a few times and it is always a very interesting exercise. Forcing you to slow your stroke right down and also speed it up and find a happy groove. It is a good open water exercise, helping you get your stroke rate up.

What we use them for more often though is to set a pace. Say you want to swim at 1:30/100m pace. Well you can set the Tempo Trainer to beep every 45 seconds (for 50m) or even every 22.5 seconds if you want to do it every 25m. Keep pace with the beep and you know you are bang on. Another alternative is say you want to do 100s on a turn around of 1:36, you can set it to beep every 1:36. As long as you get in before it beeps you get rest. When it does beep, off you go. It allows you to be very precise.
 
It is a great tool for helping you to get your pacing right. But more importantly it is a great tool for keeping you honest, which is really helpful if you are training alone.Tonight I did a series of 5 x 400m. I had the pacing set fairly conservative, since I know I have lost some speed. I was okay for the first 3. By the fourth I was hurting. By the 5th I was screaming sore. Whilst I could have done the session using the pool clock, really by the 4th one and definitely the 5th one I would have fallen off the pace and missed the times. Having the Tempo Trainer meant that I stuck to my times. It also meant that the set was 'I just threw up a little in my mouth' hard. It more or less blew me out of the water for the rest of the session.

All up the session wasn't as quick as I would have liked and it some ways it was a bit of a reality check. But still the trip back to fitness is one full of baby steps and this was an important first one.