Doing work

Slightly guilty of breaking my own rules about not doing too much too quickly this morning.

This morning I finally achieved something that I have been contemplating for a while and that was a double swim session. By this I mean that I finished the 5:30 Friday morning Swim Smooth session and then rolled through and did the session again with the 6:30 squad. All up it made for around 6000m of swimming. The longest single session that I have swum in probably 20 years.

Over the last couple of months I have been quite cautious about overworking my upper body, particularly my right shoulder where I tore the AC ligament last year. However, during the last few weeks I have had increasing confidence in my shoulder and that has led me to push the boundaries a little bit. In fact I have been very happy with how the body has been holding up. I have been continuously gauging how my body is feeling and at no time has it felt like it was being overextended by the swimming. My right shoulder gets a little achy, but certainly no sort of acute pain. The long swim I had last Friday gave me confidence that I would be able to get through a slightly longer session today.

Today's swim is all part of my push to try and increase my quality mileage in the pool. So far so good for this week. The test will be whether or not I can sustain it. To help with that my intention is to try and make these double Friday's a regular thing.

Whilst doing more seems like a logical way to improve I have had some thoughts about whether doing a double session is an effective way of doing so, or whether it is simply the swimming equivalent to junk miles. I find the idea of junk miles an interesting concept. I know people who feel they are the bane of triathletes and their most common pitfall and other people who don't feel junk miles exist. I am not sure where I sit on the topic, but I am a big believer in quality, mindful training. My concern has been whether these sessions count as quality mindful training, or whether they are just churning. After some thought though I think these longer sessions do make sense.

Firstly I am working my way towards Ironman, the swim leg for an Ironman is 3.8km, and so as part of that you start doing more 4000m and 5000m swim sessions anyway. I see today's session as part of that. Unlike the Marathon, or even 180km on the bike, fitting in a 3.8km swim session is quite easy, so why wouldn't you? Certainly I know plenty of the top triathletes around the world regularly do long swim sessions. Similar I see what a lot of the marathon swimmers I train with achieve and the training that goes into it and it makes me think that longer sessions can be effective. Whilst I don't advocate doing something simply because somebody else does, this is one area that I think tends to make sense. For a lot of people a swim session is 1hr, 3000m. Done and dusted. But I think that stems a lot from a dislike of swimming as much as a feeling like they don't need to do more. So, for me, longer swim sessions are a logical part training for the races we do.

My other concern has been about whether by simply doubling a session I am defeating the purpose of that session. After all Threshold Friday is supposed to be all about shortish and sharp. Wednesday Swim Smooth Red Mist sessions are where we do the longer stuff. My thoughts on that is that the double session tends to be a bit of a mix. The 5:30 squad is usually a bit faster and so the first time through the set is short and sharp, you feel the burn. The second time through is where the fatigue plays a part and I find the session becomes more about holding times when tired. In many ways I find the second half the session to be very similar to the Wednesday swim. Once again I don't see this as a bad thing.

Finally, something has to change in swimming for me. My swim pace has been sitting around the same speed for a couple of years now. I have good swims and bad swims, but the basic speed is similar. I need it to get a bit quicker and so I need to try something to achieve that. The other day I mentioned doing some more solid swim sets by myself, and that is part of it. Getting in more miles is part of it too, since I know from experience that more swimming tends to lead to improvement in myself. Technic is part of it too and I work on that continuously, but all the analysis I have had done indicates that there are no big gains left there, just incremental ones.

Really that is what it boils down to for me. When all is said and done getting quicker at Triathlon is all about work. The work needs to be smart, and targeted, and appropriate etc. Going out and just thumping down big amounts of training volume will only get you so far. But provided that the work you are doing is planned intelligently, then he who does more tends to go faster (there are of course exceptions). Today's session was part of me doing more. Hopefully the faster bit comes later.