Now that Berlin Marathon is in the books and I have taken 1 week completely off, and this week has been an nice easy week, I am thinking about the future, more specifically about swimming!
I went to the TCEC swim training yesterday, I was awful! We had a 4x200m set in the middle, I swam the first 200m in 4 mins, then it was a downward spiral to 4:20 and even as low as 4:30. I could feel that my technique was falling apart, my muscles ached and I was just so slow! So today I decided to have a look at see how I got to where I am today, the best way to understand the future is to understand the past.
I didn’t go swimming at all this year until March 28th.
In April I swam 6 times,
all after the 16th of April, so I guess I can say that is when my season started. I was worried about the Woogsprint Triathlon at the end of May, so wanted to get some swim fitness going.
In May I swam 9 times!
That is a lot for me. I was trying some drills and faster swimming, but the volume was pretty pitiful, I didn’t swim more than 2km in a session once. I was generally swimming 2k or just less, then heading home.
In June I swam once in the pool
(the day before the Woogsprint) and 750m in the Woogsprint.
In July I swam twice,
once on the 12th (1.6km after 5 weeks of zero swimming) and once on the 25th (also 1.6km).
In August I swam once in the pool,
on the 1st of August for 1.8km and once 1.5km in Merzig Triathlon.
In September I swam once –
in the Rhein Ahr Triathlon.
The problem
That is not impressive. I hadn’t really realised it, but since the Woogsprint on June 5th, I had swum 5 times until yesterday. That is 5 times in 17 weeks, with 2 of those swims being Olympic distance triathlons! The annoying thing is that I don’t think that I am that bad at swimming. I mean, off minimal swim training I did a 13:14 750m swim in Darmstadt. That isn’t good, but it also isn’t dreadful. Last year in Wasserstadt I swam 34:30 for a half distance, again not world beating, but decent. I just need to put in some training, and I can be at least mid-pack of a Landesliga race.
The solution
So, I know what the problem is, I don’t swim enough. The solution – swim more! It sounds very easy, but I really like running, and winter is running season for me. Cycling is good too, especially when the weather is nice. Swimming takes so much time for me to do. Yesterday I went to the TCEC coached swim training, I left the house at 19:15 and got home at 21:45. I swam for 1h05 including rests, that is 2h30 time out the house, that is a marathon long run! I can bitch and complain all I like though, I need to swim more, so I will try to get to the coached TCEC swim sessions frequently, meaning at least once a week, better twice a week.
As I swam 16 times to get into decent swim form for the Woogsprint, if I go to the coached training twice a week for 8 weeks, I should be back to good form (for me). That should set me up nicely to swim faster next season, which will be important, as I think I might not run a marathon next spring, instead concentrating on triathlon for Roth and Maxdorf.
So that was pretty much a stream of consciousness, but I wanted to have it down in black and white. I got better at swimming when swimming twice a week (even though they were short sessions). I got gradually worse when I swam about every 3.5 weeks, and now I suck big time!