Day 3 & Thoughts on Swimming

Before I get to the brief recap of today workout (and it IS brief), I want to share a few thoughts on swimming. It is easily my weakest discipline, and I'm still trying to figure out what my 'race pace' is. All I can go off of is what my times were last year in the two triathlons that kept accurate splits.

Copper Creek Tri (June 24th) 2:15/100 yd
Hy-Vee Triathlon (Sept 3rd) - 2:04/100 yd

So at least I saw some improvement. But still, that's nowhere near where I want to be if I ever want to finish on the podium, let alone the top 10 in my division (which is a goal). As a side note, in both of those events, I wore a wetsuit, but not a full-length one. A proper wet-suit should improve your times noticeably, but I'll delve into that more another time.

In reading support blogs on BeginnerTriathlete.com, one of the common responses to "How do I swim faster" is "Swim more". A bit snarky, but the point is well-taken. I took that to heart, and when I started swimming again at the beginning of the month, I figured I'd slowly increase my long swims. Started out doing 1500 yds, then 1750, then 2000, etc.

But then I started doing some more reading about swimming workouts, and the universal consensus is that is exactly the wrong thing to be doing. Instead, I should be doing 'drills' - swimming shorter lengths within a larger workout goal. For instance, 4 x 400s totaling 1600 yds, and trying to do each one incrementally faster. Or working on different breathing techniques. It's kind of like interval training, I guess.

So after reading that little nugget, I took a closer look at my swim schedule for this training program, and sure enough - on each day they have specific drills to work on. And today was one of those days.


Good thing today didn't require much time. Got hit with a little snow storm that slowed things down in the morning. Still, managed to roll out of bed at 4:35am and was at the campus right after 5am.

SWIM: 30 min (race pace)
As stated earlier, I'm not sure what my 'race pace' is supposed to be. I had to do 3x400s (not including warm-up and cool-down), each faster than the last. Well sure as shit, I was able to do it. Check out these splits:

400 #1 - 7:02 (1:45 pace)
400 #2 - 6:57 (1:44 pace)
400 #3 - 6:41 (1:40 pace)

Damn! I'm averaging :20 improvement and it's only January! Now that's what I like to see. Granted, those were intervals and I took about 30-40 seconds between each one. The true test will come in a few months when I'm able to get out in open water and swim that distance non-stop. But it's a great confidence booster this early in training.