A Nice Friday

It has been a nice way to finish the week today. Good swim this morning, satisfying day at work, left a bit early to go and pick up the daughter from school, a bit of a play and then a relaxing afternoon at home. Not really much to fault there.

A tough swim this morning, in that enjoyable way that tough session can sometimes be though. Not a particularly remarkable session, just a lot of work done at threshold pace. When you are swimming at that kind of intensity it doesn't really need to be complicated.

On Friday's I often to a bit of extra swimming after the squad finishes. I have a set of drills that I really like doing that fills the space very well. But today I gave myself the early mark and got out of the pool at the end of the session. I had a couple of reasons for doing it, firstly I was fairly shattered, it has been a solid week of training and the session was also a touch one. The other reason for doing it was that I felt I could do with a mental break from my drill set. As I said I really enjoy the set that I do, but recently I have felt like I am just going through the motions with it. A few weeks ago I changed it a bit and that has helped, but I thought as well that I could with a little break. Come back to the drills again next week recharged and ready to focus. That last word focus, I think that is the key here, particularly with drills. I find that they really are a bit of training that if you aren't thinking through what you are doing, they lose a lot of their benefit.

On a bit of a side note, I used to spend the extra kilometre of swimming doing efforts. Usually 100s with pull buoy and paddles. Good solid triathlon thinking, want to go faster, do some extra hard training. It made me feel good and certainly helped get miles in the arms, but I have to say I never noticed that much benefit. A while ago (4 or 5 months ago) I had a significant improvement in swimming. That improvement coincided with me changing from doing extra efforts to doing extra drills. Coincidence, I don't think so. Does that mean I am saying that you can drill yourself fast? Of course not, not exclusively anyway. Swim training has to be a mix, like all other training. It has to have some technique work, it has to have some intensity, it has to have some endurance work. But certainly if you identify a gap in your technique (in my case the catch) doing drills to work on that definitely will help.

On the bike in the morning for a longish ride. Looking forward to it.After missing my longer ride last weekend due to illness, it will be good to be back on the TT bike.