Artemis's Group - FULL! (Page 6)

You can also copy and paste to the link section of your blog in your training log.  

I do a similar thing. I swim 2-3 times a week. I try to make one swim into a long, continuous swim at a steady pace, kind of like a long run would be, gradually increasing the yardage every week. Last April I could not swim more than 50 yards without taking a breather, but I'm up to swimming 2000 yards continuously (except for minor stuff like needing to pause and readjust my goggles or swim cap). (I do another swim where the main set is some kind of intervals with rest. If I get a third swim in, I do some drill work.)

It gets kind of boring for me, too, but I counteract that by concentrating really hard on my form when I swim the longer sets; especially since I am swimming less hard than I do for short sets, I can really ask myself all the time "Am I holding the right body position? Are my abs engaged? Am I pulling using my lats, not my triceps? Am I keeping my elbow high and catching the water correctly? Am I rotating enough through my stroke? Am I over-rotating to breathe?" It's been helping a lot with my stroke (drills are also great for this), and more importantly, it passes the time. Mostly because my stroke is by no means perfect and I'm always catching myself committing some cardinal sin or another.

I think that you really need that continuous swim to help build endurance (and also to help you get an idea of what your actual race times are likely to be like -- I can swim 1:30/100 if I'm only going to swim 100's, but it's going to be more like 2:00/100 when I'm swimming 1650 yards.) But if you only swim long continuous swims, you won't get any faster -- you need to mix it up and do some swim workouts focused on building speed in order to actually get fast.

Interesting.  My project is studying the changes in gene expression in the heart as the rats go from compensation to failure.  Somewhat similar.

It's going reasonably well.  I've got a lot of data and I'm writing a manuscript now.  Planning to submit it in January, so hopefully the reviewers like it too.