SBR Utopia ---- Permanently OPEN!! (Page 34)

If/when a second session comes along then she'll likely get in the pool as well.  The crappy part is that the swim is at a public pool, so she can't video tape me unless we find another session time - come to think of it, her Tri group has time booked every Sunday at another pool, and she can do it then if I go again (which I want to).  I may try to video myself soon as well.

Felt like I swam a lot last year, and didn't see the gains from it - fitness yes, speed no.  So the approach at the moment is to balance everything, and we'll see what happens with the swim pacing.  I throw in BR to my swims,a dn the odd backstroke, but I don't plan to try and hurt myself with an attempt at fly.

M, oh my - that thing is BADA$$.  Very nice!

I hear that a lot too. I think many really underestimate what it takes to make advancements in swimming in more than one way too. It takes a lot of hard work to do it. Being consistent and pushing oneself many workouts, getting in a lot of workouts. So many don't seem to understand how technical it is or what it takes to build that. Really have to pay attention to what's going on, a lot more than with either of the other sports. I'm particular about things, but have had to really step it up in swimming to make gains.

Jason's swim mileage was ~500,000. Convert that to approximate run mileage (4 to 1) and it works out to 1,136 miles on the year. Or just over 20 miles a week. Would many really expect to make substantial running gains doing that (in a not that technical sport) and just going through the motions? It's possible, but you have to really work at it. Both plan and execute very well. And that's with a significantly easier motion to work with. Before joining masters, I put in a couple months of 80,000+ and made maybe a few seconds per hundred gain. I could swim a lot more, but still wasn't getting faster. Jumped into Masters and gained several times that in the same time on less swimming. And kept on gaining throughout the year. Around the holidays and a bit after, I lost a noticeable amount of speed, maybe 8 sec/100 or so. I didn't understand what was going on. Volume had dropped some from the fall, but was still at least as much as what got me there in the first place. Then realized I wasn't watching what I was doing as much. Over the past few weeks I've gained a few seconds back, but have my work cut out to improve to and beyond where I was. Swimming is very unforgiving like that. A lot of people come in that can work hard and do watch things to some extent, but swimming takes to to a whole new level. Well beyond what we've been used to. After being in several meets now I can feel it more. A number of things just aren't as second nature as they should be. Swimming is just a very, very demanding sport, and adds in ways that we are not used to yet.

Glad to see that didn't come across as overly harsh. It may still sound tough, but is also the reality that I've seen so absolutely applies to me too. That analogy is right on too. The end of what we can see is not all that there is to look at. Another way to help with all the nuances around swimming is a comparison to aero gains. So many want the big drops and limit thinking to that. There isn't really much that will do it. However, there are a dozen small things that may not seem very significant, but put them all together and they really add up. Similar to swimming. And in this case there are dozens of things to do. Learn how to do them. Not all at once. Work on some, then move the area of concentration around to others while trying maintain what has been learned. Come back around and take another look at things. Keep cycling around over and over and over. There is pretty much nothing that we learn right away and know for all time, never looking at it again. It's a continually evolving process we have to make happen.

I'm not disagreeing with either of you - for the most part I agree with what you're both saying.  Unfortunately, local Masters/Tri swim times don't work for my life schedule, so I'm on my own in the pool.  I do think it's a lot of focusing on small things one at a time, and that will be what i try to do for the time being.  I also know I won't hit the same type of swim volume that I managed last year.

I was going to comment about the 500,000 number and swim volume in general.  Over a whole year, 500k is about 3 days / week @ 3000 yards.  Maybe expensive, but it's not unworkable time-wise for most folks, it's just about being consistent - same as biking and running.

Swimming with a team - masters, whatever, is also a big plus as it keeps you honest about your effort level, and someone may be there to point out flaws in technique.  I did that averaging about 1.5 swims per week last year and still improved my swim at Tahoe over my previous IM.

Last note: I think a high volume block of swimming is good esp if you feel you've plateaued.  Back in hs / college when I was in-season for water polo and swimming, we'd be working out 2-a-days, ~7-8k yards per day, every day.  But that was only a couple months out of the year.

1:33:40 for my Half Marathon this morning, about a 4:30 improvement over last year.  The lack of any hard runs in the last few months resulted in some pretty good suffering for the last 5-6 Kms.  The hills on the second loop absolutely punished me but I was able to (mostly) maintain my pace for the whole race.  Pretty happy with the result!

The bottoms of my feet feel like hamburger.

Nice pace there sir!

Indeed!   GReat job.

8 mile hilly run for me, negative split.  Longest run since PV half last November so happy to be back at it

Great job, Arend!  Race report coming soon?

That's great news that you're back to running, Chris!  How's the foot?  Still bothering you, but manageable enough to deal with it?  

Wow Arend - I remember the types of paces you used to run, so to put up that number is really impressive.  You've come an awful long way, congrats!

Agree with Ben.  Most triathletes think that 6-8k per week is enough to see significant gains...and that 8-10k per week is a crap load.  It may be enough for a poor swimmer to see gains, but if you're already swimming sub 1:45 per 100 for races, it's barely enough for maintenance unless you are really gutting yourself for those 6-8k yards.

But rather than compare swimming to running, I rather compare it to biking where it's more of a 100y swimming = 1 mile biking.  So 6-8k yards is like 60-80 mpw cycling a week.  Most people would agree that if you're already someone averaging 22-23 mph for an Oly, or 20-21 for a HIM, you're not going to see much gains doing 60-80 mpw.  But you can make those miles count.  If your 60-80 mpw are 3-4 one hour sessions where you're going 90-95% of FTP, you can still build up pretty good fitness compared to the other guy riding 60-80 mpw at 65-80%.  Same goes for swimming.  If your 6-8k per week is made up mostly of sets that make you want to puke, rather than a whole bunch of 200's at Oly pace...you can see gains.

Swimming is low impact, and while swimming a lot is always good, sometimes we have to sacrifice yardage for intensity as triathletes.  Just be honest about how hard your swim workouts are.  Masters is a good way to keep you honest, but it's not to say you can't push yourself on your own.

So my guess was pretty accurate?  What do I win?

Awesome job on the PR...not surprised

First TT in the books.  Overall a good showing with small room for improvements.http://www.strava.com/activities/115624799/overview

10 miles
23:15 / 25.8 mph
294 AP/ 294 NP  VI =1.00

Good enough for 8th overall and 2nd in the Men 18-34 Cat 4/5.  I placed right about where I thought I would given the competition.  Winning time was 21:4X.

First half was 296 AP and second half was 297 AP, the turn around was 0 watts for 9 seconds which brought my AP down to 294.

I was closer to 291 AP at the 3/4 point, but had enough left in the tank (too much) and pushed it up to 294 by averaging 336 for the last 2 minutes.

I've got another TT next weekend...likely about 1.5-2 minutes longer in duration, but I should be able to squeeze out 300 I think.  It's point to point, so I don't lose any watts as there is no turn around. 

It's your lucky day!  You have won an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii!  

Awesome result Jason!  Pretty awesome consistency to get a VI of 1.00.

Gonna try to write up a RR tomorrow.