I never thought I would say it but I’ve been really enjoying swimming lately. I’m even starting to think of myself (dare I say it) as a swimmer…
Not to be getting ahead of myself, I’m not quite at Michael Phelps level just yet but I can definitely feel improvements.
This season swimming was on my hit list, I want to be a triathlete. Not just a biker/runner with a crap swim. As I said in this post I was targeting all of the areas I didn’t really like or was weak at in an attempt to improve. In that post I said I could feel some things improve, technique and my feel for the water but that I was neither strong nor fit enough to take advantage of them. I knew that I would get a bump in speed after a couple more weeks when the strength caught up and in the last few days it’s started to happen. I did a 3800m time trial on Sunday and for the first time ever negatively split it, and by a good bit (I’ll post the tt results in the second part of my to wetsuit or not to wetsuit blog) Then today I had a straight forward 3k swim with 5x400m main set. I set off at my usual effort level for this session and to my surprise I was way ahead of target the whole way through the first 400. I took 40 seconds off the first interval target which is a huge jump in speed. The second was 43 seconds ahead, the third 41. I was on a huge buzz the whole time, I couldn’t believe the difference. The water started to feel heavy at this point but I was on such a high I kept the effort up and came in for the next two almost as quick loosing about 4 seconds on each. That still had me 35 seconds ahead of target. On an interval that should have taken me 7:30 to get to under 6:50 and sustain that pace was a big jump in speed.
It’s hugely satisfying to see progress in a session, to see it in two key ones in two days is a big confirmation that I’m going in the right direction.
This week is a recovery week and I’m looking forward to a couple of easy days as I’m tired and sore (trophy pain) all over after a hard couple of weeks.
Rob