8.6.2020 - Thursday's Workouts & Thoughts of the Day

Kind of a 'tweener day here..32 hard-fought minutes in the pool + a 47 minute Sufferfest session. That was my first swim since 7/1 but I wasn't hardly going before then, either. Somewhere in here I'm going to find a way to rediscover swimming or turn in my tri card..

I don't think 30/30's would be any more fun running! Good luck with the pool. My day off training here. But I am (due to scheduling mess) swimming tomorrow, Saturday, AND Sunday. Basically I get pool slots when they are available, plus join some groups for OWS. Trying to get in as much swimming as possible this summer, because I don't know what the situation will be like once I go back to work, once OWS is no longer doable in later fall and winter, and if/when pools close for the season (or, hopefully not, due to more outbreaks).

Note from former (assistant) swim coach:
Often when you're short of breath or light-headed swimming, it might actually be from not exhaling sufficiently underwater and then "hurrying" to both exhale and then inhale when you turn your head to breathe. Guessing that something is off with the rhythm of your breathing. I sometimes have trouble with this in indoor pools that aren't well-ventilated. Asthma (chlorine, sadly, is a trigger!) makes it hard for me to completely exhale underwater, so I'm still exhaling when I turn my head to breathe, so it feels like not enough air exchange goes on....or something like that. For me, it seems to be more an asthma than a technique issue because I have never had that problem in an outdoor pool or open water, except maybe super-cold water that can cause you to breathe very rapidly and shallowly. I'd work on drills like kicking with fins on your side and really exhaling well, then three slow strokes, then kick on the other side, etc. Sometimes I'll do that to "re-set" if my breathing is getting weird.

Thanks for the tips on the remedies for swim breathing.  My workout called for 20X run 30/30's but I was short on time so I only got in 15.  Fifteen was about perfect.  twenty would have been about as many as I would have wanted to do and 40 would have been insane.  When I was in college we had 200m in the mix for our speed-work days.  we did 20 repeats on those days.  In college, we got a lot more rest than 30" between our 200m repeats.  I think it was like 2 minutes of recovery. 

Edited by BlueBoy26 2020-08-09 8:40 AM

All depends on speed you do them at

30 sec on, 30 sec off should be ay which should be about the pace you can hold for about 6minutes.

My coach was having me do them on the bike, in four sets of 10 with a two-minute easy spin in between. Depending on the set (they were supposed to build across sets), I did 125-150% of FTP on most. (I could not make it for the targets on the last one, which went up to...I think...180%?) It was at least as hard as an FTP test, if not worse. Probably depends on your strengths as a cyclist--for me it is much easier to hold a fairly high % of FTP for a longer time (I have held about 80% for HIM) than it is to do short, hard bursts like that. I am truly a slow-twitch tortoise. I actually hit my best one-hour power for that awful workout, even though that would have included at least 12 minutes of warmup and cool down!



Edited by Hot Runner 2020-08-10 10:06 PM