The above picture is me cleaning house during the ski ball competition this weekend. It was JD's birthday and none of us were in the mood to paint the town, so we took part in some friendly competition. This place also had a speed bag (see below) that you could hit has hard as you could and it would give you a max power number. I was winning until Mayor Meeker told me that taking three steps and a crow hop didn't count. He called it a sucker punch. After Denny gave us some regulations on how we were to throw our hay makers, I lost.
####
I just finished a very solid week of training. I managed 21.5k of swimming this week. JD has been drawing up the workouts and all I have to do is show up and swim.
My plan was to swim 4k per/day Monday-Friday, take Saturday off and a 1.5k loosen on Sunday. Our goal is not a huge over-load, but just to swim a bit more than normal.
After week one, we got right back into things with today's set (below).
WARM UP
2 x 200 as 75 free/25bk/25br/75 free
4 x 75 Fly/bk/br
200 kick
4 x 25 build
200 easy paddles
MAIN SET
5 x 300 on 5:00, 4:55,45,40,35
5 x 200 on 3:30,25,20,15,10
5 x 100 on 1:50,45,40,35,30
100 kick
400 bbp
100 easy
4600 total
The idea of this set was for there to be no extra rest between the 300s, 200s, and 100s. The set is to be swam straight.
Normally, this set would be challenging, but do-able for me. However, I noticed right from the start that I wasn't feeling too peppy in the water. I started the main set figuring to get about 30 seconds rest after the first 300. I was surprised when I came in around 2:45.
I thought, no big deal, I'll just swim the next one a little harder. I came in again on the 2:45 and thought I must not be warmed up yet and took off again swimming what I thought was faster. Well, no luck, the third one was even slower than the previous two.
I stopped to regroup for a moment and figured I had two options.
1. I'm too fatigued to get anything out of this and should get out.
2. I should not focus on hitting splits and just put the time in.
I ended up choosing option two and took the slowest send-off for each 300,200,100 and just swam steady.
Was this the best decision for me?
Here is how I look at it. Sure, I was fatigued. I was actually so fatigued that I wasn't even able to swim hard enough to get much above threshold/VT1. However, being new to swimming and having descent technique, I decided that just being in the water and putting a low level of stress on my cardiovascular system that I was actually making myself stronger. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be recovered, but by swimming steady and focusing on proper mechanics I was getting a benefit from this.
If this session was a key workout during my specific preparation phase, I probably would have chosen option number one. If the goal of the session is a longer continuous set at a mod-hard/threshold intensity, I would not have gotten the benefits that I was aiming for during the workout and would essentially be making myself more tired rather than fit.
I think it is important to consider where you are at in your season when figuring out if you are doing more harm than good within a workout session. Are you getting out of your body what the session requires? Are you making yourself more tired than more fit?
There is a reason why you are going hard during certain training session. You are looking for physiological adaptations from going hard. If you are unable to complete the session, either decrease the duration of the interval or increase the rest between them because all the matters is the adaptation.
I got a little off track there, but I just wanted to point out that there is a reason for going hard and whether or not you attempt to half the session depends on where you are at in your season. If you are unable to go as hard as required for the adaptations, then pull the plug. If you are in the early part of your season, stop, regroup, and figure out how to get the work done. From personal experience, hoping out of a session when your volume is already low, doesn't sit well on the motivation side of things.
Until next week,
Mat
