Swimming and Biking
After taking the beginning of last week a little easier to recover, I started back up with some more race specific training, gearing up for the Mussleman Triathlon, an ITU Continental Cup in Geneva, NY on July 12. My foot still hasn’t healed, so I’m seeing the doctor and maybe getting a bone scan on Thursday/Friday. Depending on how that goes, I may not end up racing in New York, or I may just go and drop out at the start of the run. Either way, with this quickly-becoming-extended break from running, I’m sure that if I do end up running, I’ll be a bit slower than I otherwise would be. That may be ok, though, since my main focus this year is getting out of the swim quick enough to make the main pack on the bike.
Speaking of swimming and biking, while I’m waiting for my foot to get better, I’ve had some pretty good workouts. I did a speed bike workout on Saturday and went the same speeds but at an easier effort compared to the last time. Yesterday, I did 5×300m in the pool at 1500m pace on 5:00. I went 3:39, 3:41, 3:43, 3:43, 3:43, and that was good for a couple of reasons. One, I did a similar workout last month and struggled through three 300’s (a little slower) before having to do the last two as 200’s to maintain a reasonable pace. This time, I not only went faster, but felt like I could have done a couple more if needed.
Today, I had a race pace workout on the bike, where I went 2×2:00 at 25.2mph, 4×4:00 at 24.0mph, 2×2:00 at 25.2mph with 1:00 aerobic pace in between each. It felt relatively easy (maybe because of all the caffeine I had today!), so I’ll probably increase the speeds a bit the next time I do this workout. Thirty minutes after finishing that workout, I hopped in the pool for the remaining one hour of recreation swim hours. I started out planning on only swimming 1000m before switching to some paddles, but I was feeling so good at a strong aerobic pace that I ended up swimming 4000m straight in 55:09, splitting 27:45 and 27:24 per 2000m.
It’s always interesting trying to do workouts at the pool in the evenings…I swim at Stanford, which has one of the nicest aquatic complexes in the world - a 50mx25y pool, a 50mx25m pool, a stadium pool, and a diving well. That’s a lot of available water, but there are also a ton of groups and camps that make use of the facilities. So, for the foreseeable future, the pool normally designated for recreation swimming is split in half and shared with the Master’s swim team in the evening. That leaves 5 long course lanes for rec swimming, one of which is used for aqua jogging / really, really, really slow swimming. So, with only four lanes, it gets pretty crowded. They put up “slow,” “medium,” and “fast” lane signs, but some people either can’t read (doubtful, since it is Stanford after all), or they just decide to jump in a random lane. In any case, I end up being about 20-30s per 100m faster than the majority of the people in the fast lane, so it makes for an interesting swim session…a fair amount of feet tapping/bumping/swerving/dodging head on traffic, especially when there are more than 6 or 7 other people in the lane. It’s not always ideal for fast swimming, but there is a bit of a slipstream affect passing people, and it somewhat mimics open water swim condititions in a triathlon where you’re changing speeds and having to sight ahead and be cognizant of your surroundings. When it is too awfully crowded, I swim with the Master’s team, which has people at my level and a lot faster. However, when I’m trying to balance swim training with biking and (normally) running, it’s worth it to be able to do my own personally tailored workout most of the time.
Filed under: Training
