It's been a while since I have posted. Life just seems to get in the way. Okay, really, winter fatigue seems to get in the way. This time of year my hibernation mode is in full swing, my favorite pastime is to curl up in bed with a ginormous cup of tea and a good book. Oddly, my workouts never seem to suffer. Frankly, besides the tea and book thing, my other top faves are working out and eating peanut butter, in no particular order.
With the Willamette Bridge Swim as a goal event for me I have been really focused on my swimming. Knowing that in 5 months I need to be able to swim non-stop for about 5 hours has me putting in plenty of extra effort in the pool. I rotate my swims, aiming for balance in strength and endurance. I have even added some speedwork, more for its ability to help with strength and stamina than for any desire for increased speed. I have a couple of new routines that I have added in.
One I wrote about earlier (I think) called the Broken Endurance Set. Start with a 20 lap warmup (I do an Individual Medley; 2 laps each breast, back, and crawl times 3). Main Set: First set is 150 yards each; easy, race pace, sprint the middle, and build to 95%. Second set is 125 yards each, then 100 yards, 75 yards, 50 yards, 25 yards. Finish with Sprints 4x25yds, and 8 to 10 laps with hand paddles, then a few laps to cool down. It is just over a 2 mile swim, with shoulder burning intensity. I love it.
A new one in the mix is an Endurance Ladder. 20 Lap I.M. warmup. Main Set: 200 yards easy with long strokes, 200 at Ironman pace (aka "I can do this all day, almost"), 200 yards at Olympic distance pace (pushing at a sustainable for 1 mile pace), then 200 at near max effort for that distance. Swim a few easy laps. Then Sprints 4x50 yards, and really push it. Cool down with 10 laps hand paddles, 5 laps I.M., 5 laps easy. Again, about a 2 mile swim. This swim helps train the body to be able to pick up the pace in the last half of a race, known as a Negative Split.
With a ultra distance event in my future I know that I have to spend a long time in the water. The latest and greatest addition to my swim rotation are the longer swims about ever 2 weeks. Two weeks ago I did a 3 mile swim and felt great. Tonight I bumped up my game and managed 3-1/2 miles without too much fuss. The downside of the long swim is that it can be a bit mind numbing. Think about it. Swim one lap and you have seen the entire course. There is no change of scenery, no change of terrain, no one to talk to, no iPod. Just the sound of your own breath as it bubbles past your ears, and the voices inside your own head. I get a lot of good thinking done when I swim. Granted, a lot of what I think about is food, but I come up with some fantastic recipes.
Another thing I do is star adding up the math of the long swim. It breaks down like this: 50 yards = 1 Lap. 1 mile = 36 Laps. It takes me about 22 strokes per Lap (counting just the right hand, like I count strides when I run). 1 mile = 800 strokes (more or less). So 3 miles = 2400 strokes with each arm. Then, figure the event I want to do is 11 miles with the current, so about 8000 strokes. That is a lot of damn strokes. And each stroke should be fundamentally the same as the last stroke. When working on stroke mechanics one thing to be mindful of is to make your very last stroke, no matter how tired you are, be as muck=h like the first stroke, of the 500th, or the 1000th. It is muscle memory. Stroke mechanics, cadence, rhythm. The catch, pull, and recovery, exactly the same every time. Every. Damned. Time. That is the beauty of swimming, and the insanity of it. It takes a special kind of crazy to get into the water and do the same thing over and over and over and over and.... well, you see what I mean.
I do have an advantage over a lot of people. I am a bit of an obsessive counter. Not like OCD must count everything, but damned close. So I count strokes, count laps, count yards. Number crunch in my head to the sound of bubbles rushing past my ears. Swimming is a special kind of crazy, but one I am well suited for.
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