Ryan Bickerstaff

Sometime in the middle of the 36,000m swim week, I decided to go for a bit of an endurance challenge and top my previous largest volume week of around 38,000m.  I was starting to feel a bit tired towards the end of the week, but last week I managed to put in 41,000m in 8 swims over 7 days.  Surprisingly, my paces didn’t drop much, if at all.  I was just starting to feel more overall fatigue.  One of the reasons I was able to put in that much time in the pool was because my running is only up to about 20 minutes every other day.  I haven’t felt any pain reoccurring, though, and that’s the most important thing at this point with that.

I still plan on racing at the San Francisco Triathlon in about 2.5 weeks, so I am putting one cycle of race prep work in the swim and bike so that I feel more race ready than I would if I were just doing aerobic work.  Yesterday, I swam short course at Stanford in the evening and did 4×25, 4×50, and 5×100 at 100, 200, and 500y paces.  That ended up being around :11 for the 25s, :28 for the 50s, and :59, :58, :59, :58, :58 for the 100s.  I hadn’t done that workout in a short course setup since the Spring, and these splits were faster and easier than back then, so it’s good to see another sign of progress.

Also, there is a couple that swims at the same time as I do sometimes.  The guy is a former Stanford swimmer, and he gave me a really good tip on my swim stroke.  In an effort to keep my stroke rate up and keep my elbows from dropping under the water, apparently I’m not stretching my lead arm out far enough.  They were amazed I could swim as fast I was and have such a short stroke.  I hadn’t realized it before, but after he mentioned it, I could really notice it!  So, I’m working on stretching out a bit more without sacrificing stroke rate or high elbows much.  It’ll take some time before it feels normal and I get the timing worked out, but hopefully it will make a significant difference in the coming year.

Filed under: Training