lightheir wrote:
On the Vasa, it says I go 4200 meters of freestyle for 90 minutes. In the pool, I average about 3000yards per hour when I have the lane to myself, which pretty much only occurs if I'm off work for some reason and can get to the pool at some strange hour where it's empty (like 10:30AM on a weekday) so I rarely get to do that. I know swimmers do a lot of volume and 1500m can be a literal warm-up for them, but I think I've got a long way before that occurs; right now, 1500 is def a legit training stimulus for me and can be done in 30mins, either on the Vasa or pool - I'm too time crunched for otherwise, so I'll typically just drop right into a set of 15 x 100 or 8 x 200 on the Vasa, or pool on the rare day where there's no circle swim. (Happens during winter, but in summer season like now, it's always a crappy circle lunch swim, so it's usually a near-random set of 25s to 200s depending on who I'm waiting for and/or trying to swim around, done at a pretty high intensity when I'm actually swimming and not waiting.)
Well, it sounds like you're on your way though. When you get to where you feel better during the last 20 min than your first 20 of the 90 min workout, then you'll know you're really in swim shape. This reminds me of a short interview I read somewhere fairly recently (within last 2 yrs or so) with one of the top 1/2-mary guys; his daily, e.g. 7 days/wk, training mostly consisted of a 12-16 mile run with a steady pace for first 10-14 mi, then running the last 2-3 mi as hard as he could. This is all he did, no intervals, no "tempo" run, fartlek, "long run", etc, etc. This has always been the way I've liked to do all my workouts also, be they sw, bk, or run, and it was quite interesting to see that a very fast (around 1:02-ish IIRC) half mary guy trained similarly. Since I know you're a runner by background, figured you would appreciate this anecdote also:)
"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."