yeah right and then have a shoulder injury to recover from

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age is just a number after your name

You won't.

Promise.

where did you find pool/race swim legs began to match your vasa workouts? Was it your vasa spm had to be x less than your actual swim spm, or was it perhaps you had to swim 1500/200 5 or 10% better than actual course/race times?? etc

I ask because I am avoiding going to the pool for another 4-6 weeks, in the mean time trying to find that spot where I can refer back to my training peaks data for training/racing times making some comparision for the coming 4-5 months of racing. The idea is to come up with the same results I found using computrainer. When using the course profile my CT times where about 10% slower than my actual race times which a good thing going into a race knowing that if I can pace my CT race simulations to past race results of my competitors I know on race day "I should" have a good bike split....make sense? using this on the vasa if I can use other ST'ers metrics where the door is set on 2 or 3 or 4 and my simulated brick session come under post race time then I know I have the pacing right.

I know there will be other factors eg wetsuit, water conditions, swell/chop, et al....my game plan is now to have vasa, computrainer and my treadmill bricks every 2nd week to be race simulation monitoring all the matrixs in TP. with the view that if I can go into a race with training times that come in under the top 5 placing then I now training session are spot on.

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age is just a number after your name

I just do more or less similar to what I do in the pool for my major workouts, but I have no real great explanation other than trusting what the typical swimmer workouts are (mostly short and hard intervals.)

But I see no problems with doing Vasa more a la TrainerRoad, and I've considered even trying that, although I suspect it might not be quite the same, as there's def a very technical component to swimming that needs to be burned in with those short/hard intervals, else you get relegated to slowster purgatory. At least that's what it looks like in the local Ys, where pretty much all the folks doing avoiding 50s &100s done hard, and are doing these long 30-60 min continuous swims, are super slow. But that could be for other reasons as well, so I really don't know.

Some of my favorite Vasa sets are hard 3' and 5' sets. (I do them by Vasa meters, but it works out similarly in time.)

What door setting do you do these on and what is your target wattage or metric you're trying to reach? Is it time based? Distance? SPM? Wattage? What are you trying to accomplish in each of the 3' and 5' sets?

I'm just curious as a relatively new owner I'm trying to educate myself on the best ways to use the product.

Commenting on the TR post.....I've had previous conversations with Nate from TR about Vasa specific workouts. This was several months ago and I've not heard any more about it recently. I would love to see a way to use the data collected to improve my overall swimming fitness or swimming specific workouts. Feel free to chime in if you know any more than this...

I'm honestly not even remotely an expert on Vasa swim training, so I'm not going to offer any guru advice. I can only offer what I did in the past 6 months, which I've mentioned before, and has seemed to work for me. The Lyman article I linked to from Vasa above does a far better job of explaining training and use of the Vasa in workout regimens.

I started at door2, and moved up to door3 when my stroke rate started to get higher than my pool rate. Again, no rhyme or reason for this. I currently train mostly on door3. However, I've tried door7 as well, and as briefly suggested above, I don't get shoulder strains at all from pulling hard sprints with it - I think it's different than running where you're weight bearing so it's probably harder to actually get injured from just being overambitious with door settings (you're self limited on how har you pull.)

I use both time and wattage. Again, not scientific or rationally based, but basically I target a goal watt range for the time interval (like 60 watts for 3 minute intervals). Lately I've moved away from time and more toward the Vasa meters, but it's pretty similar (60 watts for 200yards, for example). The wattage is the most helpful number for me, but it's not as tight as a Kickr or 3-sec avg powermeter, so it does bounce around and thus I use ranges rather than a hard number.

Again, I don't think you need to go Vasa-specific for workouts. I've been also using the 'Workouts in a binder' from Gale Bernhardt written for swimmers just to get some variety, and it works great.

Thought this was interesting myself and to share to those newbies.
History: starting using the vasa ergo at july working on building up to door setting 7. Prior to this no swimming in a pool for 18mth. In the past 10 mths no pool swimming only time I touch the water was in a race. Now nearly a year later back to the vasa to build for the next 70.3 season, so I will have some residue base from my just gone season with the first race in Sept. This time I am aiming for the 70.3 world qualifier on a podium, not on a roll down slot. No training plan purchased or the build phase which is currently 1 week old and 4 weeks since my last OD race during which it has been run/bike. Now serious AeT zone 2 work for 3 weeks till I get to 16 weeks out from A race, then I will buy into Dave Scotts training peaks plan for the build peak taper advance 15hr week. All my vasa AeT work will be accordingly to race distance in this case 2187y, the bike 2.5hrs, the run 90mins all in AeT zone 2 for another 2weeks.


Today: 2187y 36:55mins 1:41/100m Pw:Hr 63.7% 58watts 91aveHr (max108) 42spm... compared to Monday's 1st session
.....2187y 40:16........1:45/100y........... 65% 54w 83Hr


The reason in sharing this is for those newbies starting out is will take several months to build up to door setting 7. Through my reading with Maffatone, Joe Friel, Alan Couzans, et al lots of qulaity consistent AeT will pay off when it come to the peak period in the plan.


Anyway I though it was interesting.

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age is just a number after your name