Subject: RE: Swim breakthroughs I'm still a turtle in the water, but I had a recent breakthru. I started following the free HIM training plan on this website. I started at week 12 because my HIM is at the end of October. After less than 3 weeks of increased swimming (which included my first 2+mile swim ), I knocked 1:25 off my 750m swim time. If my calculations are correct, that's 11.3 seconds faster per 100m. I finally broke the 2min/100m average. Not only that, I did the 750m course as a warmup, and my warmup time was faster than the previous month's race time. The actions in training: 1 ) Swim more often per week. I think I swam 4 days in a row. 2 ) Swim farther. In my longest workout, I did 1800m non-stop. 3 ) Relax more. The less effort I put in, the faster overall I would go. The results at the race: 1 ) I never even came close to maxing out my heartrate. That was killing me in the previous races. 2 ) I had more energy coming out of the water. Had my fastest run at that race, too. 3 ) My pace went from 2:10/100m to 1:58.8/100m. I'm doing an Oly Tri in just over 2 weeks, and I'm totally jazzed about the swim. Like I said, I'm still more of a turtle in the water than a dolphin, but that is still a big deal for me. |