Summer is Coming

A bit of 'fun' down the pool this morning for the SwimSmooth Wednesday morning Red Mist set.

The main set this morning was passed onto Paul from legend swim coach Bud McAllister who is currently the Head Coach of the Western Australian Institute of Sport. Bud is best know for having coached Janet Evans to her multiple Olympic Gold medals. The set was one that Bud considered to be a test set and looked something like:

3 x 400 steady
1 x 400 just above threshold
2 x 300m steady
1 x 300m at threshold
1 x 200m steady
1 x 200m sub threshold
1 x 100m max effort

Actually Bud's set is a bit different to that, with a very specific set of target paces, but this gives you the general idea. Whilst the session was an interesting one with a good story behind it, some felt that the session held too much high intensity work to be a true Red Mist set, and they perhaps have a point given that the final 200m and 100m were done pretty much on the limit. However, that doesn't diminish the effectiveness of the session, which Bud likes because, as he says, 'it hits all the energy systems'. True Red Mist or not, I think for everyone involved it was both a satisfying and challenging morning.

Not that the above set was the entire set of course. Keen readers will notice that the above set is only 3000m long and of course a normal Red Mist session would usually be significantly longer than that, which this morning's session was. In total the morning had another 2000m or so of swimming done to complete a rather tough Wednesday workout.

The interesting swim set wasn't the only item of significance this morning. The other important thing tat happened today was that I noticed the sun rising before 5:30. I must admit I haven't been getting out of bed early that much over the last few weeks, but I have still managed to see a fair few sunrises, however I am sure I haven't noticed a pre-5:30am sunrise yet this Spring.

It is currently cold and a little bit damp in Perth, which makes it hard to believe that we are a month into Spring. However, the early sunrise today was a good reminder that warmer weather is indeed on the way. Summer is coming.