In these first few weeks of getting the training wheels turning again, fitness testing is spaced between unstructured workouts to set a benchmark for the first (and coldest) part of my season. I say unstructured because I know myself well enough to know that I’m likely to jump into 20-hour weeks at the intensity I held during peak sprint-race training. I’ll write myself an unrealistic week and burnout shortly. So I go out on workouts for however long I feel like, trying to increase frequency before duration and intensity. However, sprinkled in are very structured and deliberate fitness tests. I covered my base-building run test in my last post. And now we jump in the pool.
I’ll miss this pool (University of Iowa)
There are perhaps dozens of different tests in the pool to assess your fitness and pace. Swimming is slightly more difficult because gadgets like heart rate monitors are not as useful. For that reason, I have found it best to find your pace at a very high intensity and structure your swim sets around that. For me, that test looked like this:
3×300 on 30 seconds rest
The 300s should be done at your fastest pace while ensuring that your time doesn’t fall off too much. You don’t want more than 15 seconds between each 300. If that is the case, then your pacing is wrong and you need to be more honest about what pace you can hold for a broken 900.
Record your time for each 300 and average them. Then divide by three to get your threshold pace for a 100. Here’s what that looked like for me:
#1: 4:04
#2: 4:09
#3: 4:07
Average= ~4:06
Threshold pace= 4:06/3= 1:22 per 100y
So I will build my workouts around that 1:22/100y pace. I’ve always been a fan of the classic 10×100 workout, which I will probably do on an interval of 1:30. Perhaps I’ll do a couple 500’s on an interval of 7:30. My fast 50’s should probably be just shy of 40 seconds. Again, it’s an imprecise art in crafting pace around a single marker. What is more precise is in 4 weeks when I do this test again and see if my average time gets faster. Just like I learned in 5th grade, good goals are measurable.
Just for kicks, I decided to do a 100y time trial the next day to see if my top end speed fell off at all over the past several weeks. Unsurprisingly, it did as I came into the wall at 1:09 (my best time is 1:04). Those who know a little bit about swimming pace probably need an explanation of why I’m a bit slow in the water.
The first lap I ever took in a pool was at the University of Iowa in my spring semester of 2011. I could hardly go more than one length of the pool without having to take a break on the wall. I could always swim, mind you, just not in any kind of competitive/workout setting. In time I refined the craft and got to the point where, although I’m not in the lead group, I’m at the front of the middle pack coming out of a triathlon swim leg. Never having trained for the short course swimming and always having to keep a large amount of reserves for a bike and run, I never developed any top end speed. My “speed ceiling” as I like to call it was awfully low, to the point where my race pace was nearly there. In April of this year, I could hold 1:15s for 20 minutes. But the second I threw in a sub-1:10, I nearly blew up. For a triathlete, it’s not exactly a bad place to be. I have yet to come across a race that demands 100% effort over a 100y yard swim. But I also don’t like being slow. So a goal of mine for this year is to break 1:00 in a 100y effort. While things like going off the wall and flip turns play a part in that, I also need to develop that speed and short term power that has never been necessary in my triathlon career. I guess it still isn’t necessary, but there’s nothing like a time goal to make that jump in the pool a whole lot easier.
