Thursday, April 20, 2006

4.20.2006 - swimming and... more swimming...



This is week is flying by... yes! I am really looking forward to my first Xterra race this weekend. It starts of with a point to point mile swim. At first I was really getting some serious swimming anxiety over this, but now I am really looking forward to it.

After just two weeks of masters (5 swims - 4 long course) my confidence is soaring. Yesterday morning i swam with masters and completed my longest swim workout to date: 4000m - short course. I know i am supposed to be tapering for my race on Sunday, but more on that in a minute. The swim included a mile time trial, which i completed at a good mellow pace in just over 24 minutes, breathing bilaterally (every 3 stroke) the whole time. I know that's not really fast but i have never even swam a continuous mile in a pool. I felt good and i didn't push at all. Then yesterday afternoon I did an evening open water swim with the Tri club. I wasnt's tired at all and swam the entire 1.2 miles with the lead pack.

my swimming is coming along... on my easy swim this morning, which was a mellow 1525 with a couple hard 100's, I hit my fastest 100's to date:
1 - 1:23
2 - 1:22

on another note i have decided to not do a full-on taper/peak for my races on the next two upcoming weekends. I am really going to try and build through these in order to put in the best performance I can on 5/21 for the Xterra West Championships in Temecula. I am just kind of taking it easy on the legs. My workouts have been short and fast, but keeping the speed up.


Training this week:

Monday - Rest - Stretching/light core

Tuesday:
AM: 2500m - Masters

PM: Tempo run - 10min warm-up/16min race pace/10min cooldown


Wednesday:

AM: 4000m swim - Masters

Lunch: 20min easy spin & stretching

PM: 2000m open water swim

Thursday (today):
AM: 1525m swim - work pool
Lunch: Core/Stretching (planned)

PM: Brick - 45min ride w/ 4 x 90sec intervals @ race pace/15 min T-run w/ 1st 10min all out (planned)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad your swimming is coming along. You are going to do really well this year.

I agree with you about not tapering for the race. I've read that you can really only get two tapers in over the course of a year. So probably its better to save them for really important races.

Anonymous said...

Have a great time this weekend and good luck and I think you are turning into a fish. Did I see that you swam 6k on one day. Oh my.

Anonymous said...

Wow. With those improvements in swimming you'll have an even bigger gap on the masses!