The coaching session went pretty okay too. The planned 12 days of Christmas session was a pretty tough one, but as with most of these sessions the squad relished the challenge. We are having a very warm day in Perth today and we were beginning to feel that last night so the session was a bit sweaty, but most came away with smiles on their faces and a happy glow from meeting a challenge. Looking forward to more of those session in the new year.
This morning my week of returns continued with a return to the swimming pool. Like running, I have been out of the pool for a few weeks as I have been doing specific paddle race training and also tapering. For the last few weeks I figured doing a tough threshold swim session the morning before a race probably wasn't a good idea. Anyway, all that is done now and so this morning it was back down to the pool for a bit of fresh and fruity threshold work with the Swim Smooth squad.
Of all the activities I have returned to this week, I have to say the swim this morning was the most surprising. I felt pretty out of sorts for most of the swim (not the surprising bit) but then towards the end we did 4 x 100m flat chat efforts and they felt really, good. I mean really good. My times for the four efforts was 1:14, 1:13, 1:13 and 1:12. That is not bad going for me, I haven't swum any quicker than 1:10 since I was a teenager.
I was a bit baffled by the quick times, particularly given the time out of the water, but then on reflection I perhaps shouldn't be so surprised by them. I am not a coach or anything (oh wait...) but my guess is that the speed has to do with the paddling training I have been doing for the past year. With the paddling I have done I have definitely increased my upper body strength. Paddling uses very similar muscle groups to swimming, so that increased strength is likely to have helped my swimming as well as my paddling. While my lack of swimming specific training means I am not great over longer distances, I suspect that 100m is short enough that I can fake it and bully my way through with strength. When the distance increases the strength fatigues out and my lack of fitness comes to the fore, but for the shorter distances I am all good. Perhaps speaks to the benefits of a good strength program when it comes to swimming...
My last interesting activity of the last 24 hours is that this morning I went to a cafe for some breakfast and a coffee. That in itself isn't that interesting, but the reason I was there is more so. StarPhysio, one of the local physiotherapist clinics and one that is run almost entirely by cyclists and triathletes, were doing a bit of a breakfast and learn session. I went along because some of the topics sounded interesting, around bike fitting and aerodynamics and I wasn't disappointed. A really good session. I am not sure I learnt much that I didn't already know about aerodynamics, but it was good to hear some of the science behind things that are held as commonly held beliefs. The bike fitting bit was also very interesting, given it is an area I don't know heaps about. I would still definitely send athletes to a good bike fitter, but it was good to learn more about some of the available technology that is out there.
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