Favorite Swim Workouts

There are two swim workouts I've done lately that I just love. I find them to be challenging, but at the same time really easy to fly through the distance without it being a chore.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the 15X100m set, but that can be hard to motivate yourself at times.

So the first one is take your 1500m race pace and add 15/10/5 seconds to that.
(For example, my race pace is 1:30/100m)

So your interval is
1:45/1:40/1:35 repeat.

What I like about this workout is that even though you are swimming hard the whole time, it feels almost like a fartlek workout. And instead of being 15X100 you think of it more as 5X300 broken up.

The second thing I like about this workout, and unfortunately unless you swim exactly my pace you won't enjoy it as much, is that those times add up exactly to 5 minutes, so its the same time on the clock every time. I just need to remember to leave on 

Red Top

Red 45

Red 25

Repeat Red Top.

The Second workout I really like doing, and I don't know what the name of it is, but every subsequent 100 has to be faster than the previous.

You make your interval time really easy, say 2:00/100m. This give ample time for recovery. 

Starting out, you swim the first 100 really slow focusing just on technique, ie; 1:55ish, should feel painfully slow. 

Then each 100 after that should be 1-2 seconds faster. 

The first 5-8 should be really easy but then you get down to the 130's and it gets a little bit more of a workout.

Once you hit #12-13 your now in the 1:20's and for me, this is getting into the red zone. 

Whats nice about this workout is that it teaches your to build by the end, and since you were focusing on technique for the first bunch, hopefully you should be swimming efficiently and strong. My goal for this one is to at least hit 15X100.

Anyways, thats all for now

Finally a new training update!

This week I finally got back in the pool. It was really difficult at first, but now that I'm a few days in its really great to start working out again. Every winter I go into a slump with my training, last years was nearly 4 month long. This year I knew that after the marathon I was going to be psychologically wiped, but didn't think it would hit me this hard. I haven't really tried running yet, but I still don't think my foot is back to par, I really need to get it checked out. The beauty of triathlon is that I can simply keep putting that off and focus on biking and swimming and there isn't TOO much loss.

Back to the pool.

I went back to my first swim with the club on Tuesday, and let me tell you, it was HARD. I was in terrible shape. Instead of swimming I was simply sinking. I felt like that mouse in the photo holding to the wall for dear life. At the end of race season I was comfortably holding 1:30/100 meters in all of my sets. This week going back, I was struggling to hit 1:30's high and sometimes edged above 1:40. I was skipping sets and doing my own thing. Turns out 6 weeks out of the pool can really do a number on your fitness.

With embarrassment in mind, I went swimming Wednesday over lunch. I wanted to get a good strong workout in, but my arms were so dead from Tuesday that I just sneaked in 1000 meters and called it a day.

Thursday I braved practice again which was 21X100 main set broken up into different paces. The end being 6X100 @ 1:35. This should have been an easy set, but I was just sneaking in around 1:33 and not getting nearly enough rest in those 2 seconds that I would have to skip again.

The plus side to this is that even though it was only two days, Tuesday to Thursday there was a drastic difference in my fitness.

I went swimming again today and did a 2.5k workout, and was finally comfortably able to make my sets on 1:35. It always surprises me how quickly it will come back. Sure I'm still a long way off from where I was in the summer, but I can consider this my build phase for the coming season, get some good ground work in. My goal for next summer is to hit 1:25/100 meters open water over 2k, this is quite a bit faster than I'm at today but with some effort I think it can come.

Anyways, off to sleep, on that note I'm going swimming in the morning. Going to try and get as much fitness in before I get fat and lazy over the holidays when I'm back home with Mom cooking for me! I can't wait!

Take it easy

1000 Hits

I've got a traffic counter at the bottom of this blog, and since September 4th 2008 I've now had 1000 Hits!

What this means is that people have checked my blog from 1000 different IP addresses. May be the same individuals however, they are doing it from all over.

More details as well, I've had 1450 page loads since September as well.

Good stuff.

Subscribe To Vincent's Ramblings

Some of you may have noticed the Subscription box on the right panel of the blog. If you type in your e-mail address it will send you an e-mail any time I update. Making it so you don't have to repeatedly check in to see if I've written anything.

Note: There will be an e-mail confirmation, it will probably show up in your junk mail.

Exciting!

Looking forward to 2009

Its been just over a month since the marathon. My foot is still bothering me a little bit, however, I made it through the warm up and cool down of Wednesday's run without any pain. Hopefully next week I will be able to do the entire workout. I'm still taking it easy but just to keep the muscles in tact.

Progress was made today, I went for my first bike ride since mid September. We were given a fantastic day in Vancouver, overcast but NOT RAINING! 

Since we had dry roads I decided it was time I try out my biking legs again.

Due to unforeseen jobs (like switching my brakes), I was a little delayed in my ride and only got to do a short 20km ride instead of the planned 30-40k but its probably a good thing to take baby steps back into it. My right leg felt good, weak, but good. If tomorrow is clear I will try and do another ride, possibly with a little more power as well.

While I was riding today I decided that I was going to really try and keep in better shape over the winter this year than I have over the years past. Last year I took nearly 4 month of sedentary laziness. This winter I want to at least get a few hours of cardio in a week to make sure I'm not starting from scratch come spring.

I've set a few goals for the coming season, I won't describe them in too much detail because I will have a full report on that sometime in the new year, but some key points are:

Podium at a race (last season best was 9th)

Race sub 4:20 at an official distance half (last season fastest race was 4:38 when standardized to official distance). To accomplish this I will really need to work on my running and biking. I figure I can run and bike nearly 10 minutes faster each. That will really be handy.

I have more sport specific goals but I'll get to those later. 

Its going to be a hard route to get there, but the fact that my legs are feeling better shows that the climb has at least begun.

Tomorrow is the Fall Classic, a half marathon out at UBC and a few members of UBCTC are racing. I'm going to head out there and watch and cheer everyone on. Expect some photos. Lets hope for clear weather.

Take Care

CRAZY FUNNY!

Either this is the funniest thing you've seen all week, or you just don't get it.

http://nfccomic.com/index.php?comic=228

It has everything, amazing math joke, AND A PUN!

This comic has a whole bunch of great puns

ex: 

Q - "Did you have fun doing laundry?" 

A - "LOADS!"

If I had Mr. Caldwells e-mail, I would probably send this to him.

Long Days in Lab

I've been spending a lot of time in lab lately and during my free time have been either catching up with the rest of life or sleeping so I haven't had all that much exciting stuff to write about. Hopefully life will become a little more interesting soon.

My foot has been feeling really good all week, the big test will be tomorrow when I lead out the run practice to see if I can make it through.

Other than that, since I haven't been riding or running at all, I decided to hit the gym and try and work on some of those minor imperfections which later result in injuries. 

Sunday I tested out the Bird Coop (Campus Pay Gym), it was pretty good, they have some nice machines that I like that they don't have at the free gym, the primary thing being the olympic bar. I really like using the olympic bar for squats. What got me on the idea of going to the gym and doing weights? Last week I tried doing lunges during the run practice and nearly crippled myself with my weak hamstrings, so I've made it a new mission to work on these, figuring that this will help me with my power problems on the bike as well.

Since I am doing very little cardio these days, I decided to do some elliptical. Laugh all you want, but surprisingly the elliptical and be a pretty brutal workout if you try hard enough. I got on it while talking with Facundo yesterday, and he got on the stationary bike beside me and kept me company while I ellipticalled???? 45 minutes later I was a drenched t-shirt and very hungry. Who knew. Its a little embarrassing though because when I think of elliptical workouts I think of Lululemon girls reading magazines listening to their ipods not sweating at all.

On another note (And probably playing a minor role in my motivation to go back to the gym), I weighed myself on a really accurate scale sunday, with shoes, socks, shorts, shirt and ipod I came in at a staggering 139.8 pounds. This is the first time I can remember since having the flu in grade 10 that I've been below 140 lbs. Post marathon weight? Maybe its just that, but I'm trying to make that back. Obviously not in the form of biceps or anything ridiculous like that, but in quads and core strength. We will see how that goes.

All for now!

The rain in here, one upside to not being out running I guess.