The time off in Warren was great. We did a ton of visiting but not much training. My only workouts were the Tango Swim and an 18 mile bike which included the climb up Hatch Run.
Tuesday night I had my swim lesson. The girl being coached right before me looks to be about Fiona’s age. I could tell she was very good. It turns out she’s ranked 2nd in the nation in her age group for the 1500m. Her time being 18:xx /1500m.
We discussed my Tango swim briefly before getting started. I tell him that I bought the smaller hand paddles and the Tempo Trainer Metronome.
The metronome has 2 settings. The first is a beep for each stroke. The second is three beeps each time you should be hitting the wall if you are holding your interval.
I explain how I have a tendency to have a high “cadence” when I swim. I really have to focus to slow it down. So he hops into the pool and takes a look at what it is that I’m doing.
First off I’m not finishing the stroke and my finish isn’t even propulsive. At the end of my stroke, I’m pushing water up towards the top of the pool. I need to adjust my hand position so I’m directing water behind me at all times. This will reduce fatigue as well because I should be just lifting my hand out of the water on recovery rather than breaking through the surface.
This will increase my distance per stroke. It will also take me longer to complete each stroke so my “cadence” should drop a bit. Old habits die hard though. So I ask to try and find the right tempo using the metronome. I think he’s afraid that working on this will slow me down and he knows I have races yet to do. So after a bit of discussion he decides that we will do “big chain ring” work and we find a good tempo for me to try out this week.
Next we discuss how often I’m swimming and what my typical swim workouts are. He tells me that my most obvious deficiency is the long swim. To start he suggests that once a week I swim 100 laps non-stop with hand paddles. This will serve multiple purposes.
1) I’ll become confident with the distance.
2) The hand paddles will be a good strength builder
3) Using the metronome, I should improve my groove. If I’m not strong enough to hold a pace the entire 100 this will show it. I will learn my pace.
Following the 100 laps, he suggested 20x25 as speed work. The goal is to try and have the same long stroke that you had with the distance swim. Also I think he wants to make sure I keep working at higher cadences.
Then I mention to him that I often feel I’m trying to control my rotation using my arms rather than with my kick. To verify this he has me do one arm drills. First, swimming with one arm out ahead of me, breathing towards the stroking arm. Second, swimming with one arm against my side, breathing towards the non-stroking arm. They didn’t go so well but I’m sure he could see that I’m not always in sync with my kick. We were getting towards the end of the session so we didn’t really dig into this issue. I’m guessing we will be back to this next week.
Somewhere along the way, we also discussed my open turns at the wall, weight training and breast stroke.
Open turns: Prefers it for triathletes, at least at my level.
Weight Training: Lats, Triceps, Lats, Rotator Cuff, Lats. Seated Row, Lats, Dips, Lats…
Breast Stroke: To get more power from my arms, I need to get wider up front. Then I need to learn how to kick/glide.
Honestly, I think trying to work on something other than freestyle is just going to confuse things. Once I feel like I can swim freestyle without having to think about making changes or adjustments, then I’ll be more interested in adding other stuff.
I ran a slow 10K on Wednesday night.
Swam the 100 laps with paddles Thursday Morning.
Biked 15 miles with the "mountain road" climb in the middle Thursday night.
I'm looking forward to the weekend. Saturday will be a big training day. Sunday will be spent whitewater rafting for 5 hours. Wahoo!
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