26 October 2022 I had a vision to do a 5,000 (or so) yard workout today, but my original intention was to have this focused only on freestyle pace work to prepare me for my upcoming virtual 3,000 yard race. As I got into the warmup, though, I decided to mix it up, blending a classic "Broken Mile" pace set that I do quite often with a more rare fly speed set that I use as a starting point to prepare for (an eventual) 200 fly race. Here's how it all went down. Warmup sets (1,

25 October 2022 I did a repeat of a workout I had done back in 2015 and re-done recently, only this time on the Broken 200s, I went freestyle (as in 2015) instead of IM (as done three weeks ago). I had had a very crappy night of sleep (less than 5 hours) and almost bailed during the 1,700 warmup (a few bits added from a few weeks ago to try to get the juices running), but told myself to at least try the 200s backstroke: 5 x 200 backstroke on 3:10 - my "Back Base" test set -

23 October 2022 After my roughly seven week break following US Masters Nationals in early August, where I averaged on slightly more than 5,000 meters of swimming a week, I started back training the week starting September 26th with a plan to gradually increase my weekly volume by 2,500 meters per week. My plan and actual results over the last four weeks: Week Starting Target Volume Actual Volume Sep 26th 12.5K 11.0K Oct 3rd 15.0K 15.6K Oct 10th 17.5K 15.

22 October 2022 Just like Hallmark created holidays, the swimming app MySwimPro created World Swim Day, a day to celebrate swimming ... by swimming. I pulled up an old workout that Maia had given me way back in 2009 and for which I can see at least one other time I did a variation of this on October 20th in 2011. Both of those workouts were done in SCM and I was a much younger man ... I was feeling pretty sore from my third personal training session (one a week for now) las

21 October 2022 I've had no negative side effects from any of my prior COVID vaccines other than some sleepiness and a tad bit of injection site soreness for a day. So, I figured it would be a great idea to get my shot Wednesday (my "off workout" day) after work, aiming for it to help me get a solid night of sleep before hitting the pool again Thursday. Alas, my BA.4/BA.5 bivalent vaccine hit me fairly hard starting about 8 hours after the shot, and I really didn't feel mys

18 October 2022 The first swim team I ever joined was a summer league team at this pool to the right in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, about 50 years ago. It's unclear if I can count my first summer swim team as being when I was 5 or 6, as I quit the team fairly quickly during the 5 year old summer as I found the water too cold! I definitely made the whole 6 year old summer season and have been hooked ever since. Someday I'll figure out a way to come back to this pool in the s

16 October 2022 My wife and I went down to lovely Ithaca, New York for a weekend getaway. My father had spent part of his boyhood years here and I had been there when I was somewhere between like 6 and 10 years old (e.g., a long time ago), so I didn't know much of what to expect. As I was researching it, I was stoked to learn that this was the home of Moosewood Restaurant, an institution whose vegetarian cookbooks played a prominent role in my Peace Corps diet when I was a

14 October 2022 Trading great workouts has been a training tradition for pretty much all of my aquatic life. Back in the 70's and 80's, before the era of the internet, I remember my coaches in Virginia challenging us with sets they got from phone calls with coaches of our competitors. While in university, I recall sharing distance set horror stories at dual meets ... usually as a way to explain away why our times on the dreaded 1000 free - 200 fly - 500 free triple weren't

12 October 2022 Today's focus on the road to the USMS 3,000 virtual event was a 2,000 yard swim for time, done at my still-cool-water LA Fitness. I broke out my FINIS Smart Goggles for this, to see how robust the tracking will be for when I do the actual event. Spoiler alert: very, very good. I did a relatively standard 1,550 yard warmup, but am opting these days to do my first build set of 100s backstroke instead of freestyle to mix up my strokes even more: 1 x 400: IM kic

10 October 2022 Celebrating Thanksgiving up here in Canada with some gentle yoga to get loose for my first attempt at my 400 IM Test Set for this new SCY/SCM season (now through April/May of 2023). I did a longer 1,850 yard warmup that included a 400 kick-for-time at 6:05+ and then launched into the main set. 400 IM Test set (2,150 yards) 8 x 50: on 0:55, 2 each stroke, build the odds and make sure the evens are at target 400 IM race pace: My revised target splits would be 2