Sunday (5th June) Swim

Inspiration for my swim this morning came from the June edition of Triathlete Europe magazine. The drill of the month is a race specific interval set.




I have always struggled with my swim, I suppose, being self taught and self trained has had a lot to do with this problem. I've done a lot of reading, a lot of practising and more reading and only recently it feels as if the bits are actually starting to come together.


My swim in the lake on Friday was all about control & focus on the stroke technique. Having decided to hit the pool this morning and skip the planned spin I wanted to continue that focus and try and increase some components of the overall race swim. 


COPE Triathlon is coming up next weekend and I would like to have my swim ready for that.Yes, technically it is probably too late to get race ready, but as lately, I feel I'm improving each time I swim and I'm improving my swim stamina it can do no harm.


I get bored trying to do sets or lap after lap so I am always looking for an edge or something to add interest to the swim sessions, enough to keep me in the pool and avoid an early sauna visit.


So the interval set went like this:

• Warmup  5-10 mins of easy swimming with some technique drills. I did front crawl for:
• 1 x 50 slow
• 1 x 100 steady
• 1 x 50 steady focusing on catch / feel for water    

• Main Set 
• 1 x 50 sprint to simulate the start of a race. 5 seconds rest before
• 2 x 100 strong effort simulating settling into race pace. 10 seconds between each 100
• 1 x 50 sprint to simulate the chaos aroun a buoy. Immediately put on paddles & pullbuoy.
• 1 x 300 smooth effort pull and focus on relaxing the heart rate.

• 30-60 seconds rest & repeat 3-4 times is recommended (I did 2 this time) 

•  Cooldown should be relaxing. I did 1 x 100 steady and 1 x 50 messing :-)

I did stretch out the recovery times as I wanted to be sure to keep a good rhythm going. I found a really nice sweet spot where my reach, catch, kick & breathing all slotted together nicely all I have to do is replicate that feeling but faster!


My total swim was 45 minutes and I covered 1450m.