domingjm wrote:
There were two pretty important observations I made, that I wouldn't have caught without a detailed record of my data. First, my swim performance (and thus perceived exertion at a given pace) are substantially improved if they occur between about 4 and 8 hours of a long bike or run. I can't explain why, but it's a robust trend. So that's when I swim.
Second, during sets of 400 and 500yd, I noticed that my efficiency (say what you will about the usefulness of SWOLF, but it was helpful for me here) declined pretty dramatically at about 200yd.
The first of these could have been found with a paper training log, never mind anything digital.
The second is something a swimmer would have noticed without a watch, and probably not have paid much attention to. SWOLF is an artificial metric, times and split times are much more interesting.
As monty says though, we're not even talking about watches here, but the newfangled time-wasters, GPS etc.
The pool distances are predetermined and exact, swimmers can remember interval and split times well enough to log them afterwards. GPS etc doesn't buy us anything.
I used to wear a watch swimming alone, since my eyes are too bad to see the pace clock. It's not helpful for timing intervals but it let me leave on the right time. I didn't wear it in masters' swim since the watch can catch on the lane lines and sometimes on other swimmers. Once prescription goggles became available cheaply I didn't use the watch at all.
Most interesting to me in the Sibbersen interview is his analysis of conditions - basically perfect, may be many years before this alignment of the stars occurs again.
Last edited by:
doug in co: Oct 24, 18 11:34