February 1, 2010

Day One with Coach Jeff PRS (OK, so I hired a coach, don't think I mentioned that.... ;)

Swimming Master's Style

Yeah, I know, I haven't done a lot of this. I used to print off workouts from SwimPlan.com and take them to do but got out of the habit. The nice thing is - it makes the time go faster when you have sets to work on.

So up until now, my longest swim has been 2000m. I could have swum longer, I just didn't. I think that 2000m swim last year was the day I ended up with a bad calf cramp and had to stop early when I was going for 2500m.

Anyway, fast forward to today. I had a 2300m workout ahead of me so I raced out of school to try to get into the pool before 3pm. The kids swim club starts at 4pm and it's nice to have some space for as long as I can.

Here's what I had to do today

400 warm up
4x100 swim w/:60 rest
8x50 w/:45 rest (kick/swim by 25)
300 pull w/:60 rest
3x100 swim w/:45 rest
200 pull w/:60 rest
2x100 swim w/:30 rest
100 cool down

To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what some of it meant so I had to email him and confirm. I haven't used a pull buoy much and found my right shoulder was a bit sore about 2/3 of the way through, but I kept on going.

One of the things I'm not good at, is taking the rest breaks. I don't like rest breaks. I'd rather just keep on swimming. Even when I do hard intervals on my own, I usually just swim slow for a length or two instead of hang out at the end. This is even more important when I'm sharing the lane with a few people. I like to find a nice rhythm and distance from them and just keep on moving. If I have to wait :30 to rest, sometimes they catch up with me and we can't take off at the same time. Throws me off. I'm anal. I know.

So today - I did some of the rest breaks, especially at the beginning, and then I just started skipping them except when I did the pull buoy and my shoulder was sore. Figured I should probably rest it. Not only that, Erik was coming to pick me up at 4:15 and knew he'd already have to wait a bit.

So I'm wondering what's up with all the rest breaks anyway. Do you think it means I don't swim hard enough and that's why I'm not needing them? Just to be sure, I made sure I swam the sets in the last half, harder than I did in the first half.

I don't know. I guess I'll ask the coach. :)

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Last week's training update

I didn't blog much since last Tuesday so thought I'd give a brief update. Not that I think any of you give a rat's ass what I did, but I do find myself going back over my blog to check things out and I'm always annoyed when don't have a recap. ;)

Tues: After my 5.8km run, I ended up having to play volleyball for 90 mins.

Wed: PT and Core and Yoga

First the PT Stuff
3X5 one legged squats on the stairs
3 sets of wall squats with band around knees
side steps with band
3 sets of toe raises

Then strength and core with 3 sets of:
10 pushups
20 crunches
30 sec back bridge
45 sec plank
20 bike crunches

Then Yoga for Runners with additional stretches:
3 sets of 30 sec calf stretches
hip flexors / piriformis / ITB stretch


Thurs: trainer ride as mentioned in prev post - 45 min, zone 2

Fri: Off

Sat: 30 min rowing, 30 min elliptical, and 30 min of the stuff above.

Sun: 30 min swim 1000m and 30 min pool running in deep water with buoyancy belt


What's coming up?

Mon: Swim 2300m (today)

Tues: Pool run :30, bike 1:00 (tight to fit in with volleyball at 6:30 but I can do it)

Wed: Swim 2200m

Thurs: Strength :45

Fri: Off

Sat: Bike 1:30, Pool run 1:00

Sun: Swim 2300m