Anna s wrote:
Hi Dev, just got home from my 4000scm today. I tried to focus on your challenge, needless to say I'm not there yet, but I made progress today. My biggest problem, as an asthmatic, is my weak cardiovascular system, which is one of the reasons I'm trying this.
500 crawl
500 pulling with paddles/buoy
500 crawl
500 pulling with paddles/buoy
Then I got a lane and didn't have to worry about hitting an old lady over the head doing fly!!
4x100 50/50 on 2min coming in around 1.40 - 1.43 (tried to work on pacing doing crawl really easy)
50 dolphin kick, 50 easy
500 pulling with paddles/buoy
4x100 50/50 on 2 min coming in around 1.40 - 1.43 - pleased with the pacing being the same as the first set, but have to admit I liked the rest.
500 pulling with paddles and buoy
100 easy
Breathing every stroke on the fly helped and taking the 50 freestyle really easy was good too. It's definately all about pacing, I find freestyle easier to swim slow. Diving more in the fly helped keep the pace down and thus easier to sustain. Fly is a real power stroke and swimming it fast is easier than slow - you have a better momentum, but it's harder to sustain this pace. Tomorrow, if the swimming conditions permit, I'll try sets of 200s. My initial goal (after of course just to survive this challenge!!) is 7mins, that gives me 1.45 for each 100. But I'm telling you now dev, I will never ever do this challenge with paddles.
Wow, well done. Sounds like you are on track for the sub 60 min in Roth (or if you don't you'll have so much leftover cardio on the bike that you'll have a pb bike split)
As part of a 4000m swim today, my main 2 sets were the following
5x200m "modified IM" 50 fly-25 back-25 breast-100 free leaving on 4 minutes
100m kick recovery
1x400m 50/50. TT mode
Time was 7:10.. I did not do this all out other than the final 100m but barely held 1:45 on that one. The rest were 1:45-1:50-1:50. I found on the fly if i drive my head "down" just before i dive in and keep the cadence as high as possible with the legs, I do better...and then when I transfer to free, I am also entering the water with more of a "one armed dive" if you know what I mean. I suppose if I do this in the first 1000m of my workout rather than right at the end of a 4K swim, I'd have more gas to break 7 minutes!
I should probably do some sets like you are doing on 2 minutes and focus on getting the times down for each 100m as I have the endurance to get through the 400m, I just don't have the speed...I can probably get some more time/distance out of my turns too. I find that if I focus on the legs and pull less with the arms, I have better endurance, or if I pull more and use the legs less I am OK too....but when I try to go hard with both, that's a problem. I think my cardio just can't supply enough oxygen if I go hard with both part of my body at the same time.
By the way, interesting thing....with all the dolphin kicking I have been doing underwater off every wall push off (I try to spend 1/3 of the pool underwater, so 8 m) on non "main set" lengths, I am finding my backstroke is going faster. Maybe "better kick" since the underwater dolphin kick used both sides of my body actively vs above water kick with a flutterboard?