Tom_hampton wrote:
Yeah 50+50 seems like a normal training week... 3-4 runs + 3-4 swims. 150 seems like where the challenge actually starts... That's 5+5.
I've been doing the barryp thing for 2 years so already at 6-7x. I forget to take run days off sometimes. Swim still needs more management, though. But 8 days in, I'm not too worse for the wear. I've been combining longer runs on days with(after) harder/longer runs... That seems to maximize recovery time before the next hard swim.
So, 100+80 (r+s) seems pretty doable. I may have to do some doubles later in the challenge. Maybe split my long run into doubles or add a 1500y recovery swim after a hard day.
OK.....as of this morning, I got up to 1181km for the year. If I do 9000m between tomorrow and Monday, then when I do the 10,000m IM swim on Dec 27th that brings me to 1200km for the year.....
sooooo......
today I had a 100/100/100 + 10,000IM TEST day.
started off with 22 minutes on the Woodway curve treadmill at the gym beside the pool (to add to yesterday's 25 min, so I get credit for one 100/100 run from that0. This is probably not the best way to start an IM swimming test set give we are talking about a guy who has not run all year. On top of this I did a really hard weights + rowing set yesterday. I could barely stand up nor lift my arms at work yesterday afternoon.
But I realized that the 10,000m IM day is fast approaching so I needed to figure what type of pacing may be doable. Today's "TEST" was on no taper, and pretty fried. When I attempt on 27 Dec, I'll have 2 days of zero swimming "taper".
So today's set
- 500m free warmup
- 9x500m IM as 400IM+100IM target time coming in 10 minutes, target departure time 11 minutes.
- 500m free cool down
The only reason I did not do ten reps today is because I ran out of lane swim time, so I had to do my 500m cooldown during public swim with no lane lines.
I tried to take it pretty easy early and I was hitting the 400IM in around 7:50 and the additional 100IM was bringing me up to 9:40 or so. This gave me 1:20 of "rest". After a while my 400IM times were inching up to 8 minutes. Intially I was losing time on the backstroke leg on account of recovering from the fly. About halfway through, my breast stroke started getting sloppy. Now my 500IM time was right on 10 minutes which I held for most of it. Then the last three I suddenly started losing even more on the back and breast legs and ended up taking 10:10 for each 500IM. The problem the longer I took for the swimming is it cut into the rest interval making things harder and harder to try to hit the 10 min target pace.
All it, it was a 22 min run plus 2 hour swim and I realized that I only did it on one bottle of water.
I think for Dec 27th's 10,000m IM set where I have to do twenty of these, is that I do the first 10 on 11 minutes departure. Then the next 10 on 12 minutes departure giving me more time to refuel. I would like to see if I can hold 10 minutes for each 500IM for all twenty, so more rest will be needed. The entire workout will take me 3:50 if I can hit the pace times and when I finish this workout, I should hit 1200km for the year.
I think this would be a big achievement for a guy who did his first 400IM in practice last Nov and first race this March, plus being run over by a bus.
I am writing all this down, mainly because if I write it down, then I am accountable (at least to the fish) to try to pull it off. Now that I wrote it up, there is no backing off.
Based on today's test, it is in the realm of possibility. This will also be the longest swim of my life in terms of duration. I am not sure how this will work out. I may need to do three kick fly at some point in this as I don't know how well my upper body endures the last hour of this. I THINK I am good to go for the first 2.5 hours. Last year's 10K I had some ramen noodles in one bottle and concentrated gatorade in another bottle and that got me through (and last year's 10,000m was 2500m fly, 500m back, 500 breast, 6500m free....this year all that back and breast will be what breaks me if I do.