More Swimming

Another day, another bit of coaching.

This morning it was back down to Claremont to help Paul with the Swim Smooth squad. Another fresh and fruity Friday as Paul likes to call it.

Today's threshold Friday was an interesting and rather challenging set built around varying distances and paces. As is often the case the set was much harder in the pool than it looked on paper. What made the set particularly challenging was that the pace didn't just stop at CSS, but in fact went quicker still, right into the realm of sub-threshold.

The set was made up of some 100s, 200s and 300s. The 200s and 300s were done at threshold pace, which is pretty demanding in itself. However, what made it extra difficult is that the 200s and 300s had been preceded by a set of 10 x 100s. The 100s started at a very relaxed 6 seconds/100m slower than threshold. But then with each 100 the target pace got quicker by 1 second/100m. If you do the maths you will see that by the end of the set the target pace was a rather swift 4 seconds/100m quicker than threshold, or as some of the squad described it, close to flat out.

Moving from 'close to flat out' back to threshold pace sounds like a good thing, but it was actually more challenging that it sounds. Coming back to threshold pace may feel easy to start with, but then the fatigue from the sub-threshold work sets in and it becomes pretty hard, pretty quick, particularly as you move from 100m efforts to 200m and 300m efforts. It was definitely a set that the squad struggled with.

Whilst it was a struggle, it was also a perfect workout for the members of the squad training for open water races and triathlons. A bit of threshold work to help people improve their aerobic capacity, as well as longer efforts to also help improve pace awareness. People were hurting by the end, but it was the sort of hurt that will bring benefits in the long run. Such are the benefits that come from a well thought out and executed session.

After the session I spent a bit of time speaking to a person who trains with Front Runner and swims with Swim Smooth. Last year they had never really worried about swimming and as such had not really done much training in it, and certainly not much structured training. This year they are taking a different philosophy and have started swimming with Swim Smooth. As you would expect they are seeing a dramatic improvement in their swimming ability, an improvement which will pay dividends during the swim leg of their next race. However, they are also seeing indirect fitness benefits in their other training too. Demonstrating once again while I feel that people who dismiss swim training as a waste of time are really doing themselves a disservice when it comes to their race preparation.

Moral of the day: Swim more and swim smart.