My last two days were endurance type days and partially covering the events I will do at Cdn Masters Nationals next week (goal not to finish last in the 100IM, 200IM, 400IM, 100 fly, 200 fly, 400 Free, 1500 free).
Yesterday's main set
- 800 IM
- 400 IM
- 2x200 IM
- 1x200 fly
- 2x100 fly
- 1x400 free
Basically did most of the line up for the meet other than the 1500m, but I did my first every 800IM....my legs were falling off halfway into the back stroke. But part of the madness of the 800IM and then doing the rest of the event lineup was doing something harder so the actual event feel psychologically eariser.
Today's main set was also a first....it was 2000m continuously fly-free....mainly a psychology set more than anything physiological
- twice 25 fly-25 free
- twice 50 fly-50 free
- once 100 fly-100 free
- once 200 fly-200 free
- once 100 fly-100 free
- once 200 fly-200 free
- once 100 fly-100 free
- twice 50 fly-50 free
- twice 25 fly-25 free
This was a totally awesome workout. I would have never believed I could do this continuously a few years ago when I was learning these strokes.
In general I took the fly hard and 25m of the free easy and then picked it back up to 400-1500m pace range. If I was still XC ski racing this would be the perfect workout of yoyo-ing intensity and trying to recover at a fast pace like moving....or like racing in a bike crit. There is a method to the madness as this comes from track pyramids we used to do but doing 100's 200's, 400's and 800's interspersed with equal high speed 'recovery'. More like a structured fartlek workout. It took me around 36 minutes (not exactly sure how long, may have been 37 min), but now the 1500m at nationals will psychologically feel easier with the overdistance and over intensity....plus I got the mental game on the 200 fly (if I can do a workout with 1000m of fly in it with a few 200's, then 200m fly all out, I'll deal with the piano on my back better)....OK OK, I know this is not optimal swimmer preparation, but I can't run track anymore so this is like going to the track and doing a crazy hard leg ripping pyramid and puking part way through trying to keep up with teammates!!!!