You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me!

There’s this strange thing with coaches who don’t specialise in working with multi-sport athletes. They assume that we have all the time in the world, and that life isn’t a constant battle against the schedule, and that their particular sport is the one that we think we need to dedicate most every minute of every day time to.

So talking to a running coach a couple of years back when I was training for a half ironman, I was told that I really needed to be getting in at least five good running sessions a week. Cycling coaches will simply refuse to admit that commuting miles could be anything other than junk miles - not even worth counting.

And the swimming coach who had a look at my stroke the other week, reckons I should do this sort of swim workout three times a week:

Warm Up
200m F/C
150m F/C incorporating drills of your choice.
200m F/C as 25m FNT
25m catch/up
50m kick with a board.
150m breast stroke.

3 x 150m F/C Farklek. (No set time. 30 seconds rest between each 150. Target is to get HR up for main set. Hard part of the 150 has to be 100% effort.)
1. 125 steady/ 25 hard.
2. 100 steady/ 50 hard.
3. 75 steady/ 75 hard.

Main set
15×100m on 2.45. F/C
3x 200m 25m F/C 25m Brst. 30 secs rest. (This is a cool/rest period between each set of 100’s)
15×100m on 2.30 F/C
3×200m as above.
15×100m on 2.15 F/C
3×200m as above.

8×25m kick on 1.15. With a board. To develop 6 beat kick.
8×25m sprints on 60secs. F/C. Maintaining 6 beat legkick.

Swim Down.
600m as 50 free 50 breast 50 kick (with board).

That’s roughly 7,850m. I’m sure that if this didn’t kill me, it would eventually make me a very good swimmer. But in the main set, there’s 4,500m just in the 100m reps, and at the average pace suggested (2:30 per 100m), that would take 112 minutes. And that’s just the bulk of the main set!

My problem is two-fold:

1. I actually think this would kill me waaaay before I got good at swimming.
2. The longest session in the pool’s public timetable is only two hours long, and all the morning ones are just 90 minutes!

I think this workout plan might need revising.

Workout:

• Type: Swim
• Date: 03/17/2010
• Time: 14:27:37
• Total Time: 1:00:00.00
• Calories: 438
• Distance: 2,377.44 m
• Average Pace: 2:31.14/100m

Filed under: Ashington, IronMan?, Swim, Triathlon