A Couple of Coaching Days

A couple of fun coaching sessions under the belt in the last 24 hours.

Yesterday the coaching was a couple of sessions down at Claremont Pool with Swim Smooth, this morning it was down to King's Park for a tempo running session with Front Runners. Both quite different sessions, but still a lot of fun.

Yesterday's swim was a bit of a late call up as Paul was a little under the weather. That it was myself and Sally Scaffidi on pool deck. The session itself was a classic building threshold session. 100s, 200s, 300s and a 400, all done at the same pace, but with the same amount of 15 to 20 seconds rest. The trick was that to get the 15 to 20 seconds rest you needed to be able to hold the same pace. If you started slowing down as the session progressed, you got less rest. If you started off the 100s really quick (which nearly everyone does) then holding onto the target pace for that final 400 became a big ask. That lesson of pacing is one of the core tenets of Swim Smooth, so it was nice to see that a lot of the squad got it right. Most people did the first 100 too fast, but they quickly got their pacing under control and reigned the rest in. As a result most of the squad was able to hold onto the aggressive CSS+1 pace specified for the 400m. Painful, but impressive.

This morning's Front Runner session was a different kettle of fish, but with a similar flavour. For the run this morning it was all about strength and pacing awareness while working up hill.

The session took place in King's Park, on the infamous Green Mile. The Green Mile, as it sort of sounds like, is a wide boulevard of grass that heads steadily uphill across the heart of the park. Contrary to its name it isn't actually a mile long, but more like 1200m. However, the Green 1200 doesn't have quite the same ring to it. The session itself is what is known at the Benita Fartlek, a session that involves running for different durations up hill at different intensities. On the whole the session is a Tempo one, with a few spikes of higher intensity and broken by periods of downhill recovery. It is good for building strength, but also for building awareness of intensity while running up hill.

Another good session that had people working hard by the end, perhaps not surprising given that the session ended with a 1200m tempo effort the entire way up the Mile.

A busy couple of days on the coaching front, but as always, a lot of fun.