Third time's a charm to restart tracking my training. I've made a commitment to myself to be in 'old man racing form' by the Masters Swimming Ontario 2020 Provincial Championships in late March. That gives me four and a half months to get back into shape and two weeks to taper.
This morning I was over at my local LA Fitness in their 25 yard pool, sharing a hot (85 degrees Fahrenheit / ~29 Celsius) lane for this test set that I first created in the summer of 2013 as a riff from this set on SwimSwam. The first time I did it, I had had a Red Bull to wake me up, but, as those are nasty, I switched over to ZipFizz the second time I did this in the spring of 2014 and re-christened this as my "ZipFizz 200s" test set. Today I was powered by my more typical 5 shots of espresso ... but no amount of jolt could help me approach my prior best performances:
Warmup sets (1,750 yards)
1 x 400: IM, kick-drill by 25s
5 x 100: on 1:20, freestyle swim w/snorkel aiming to descend (was 1:12 -> 1:09)
6 x 50: on 0:50, w/fins going 8 SDKs off each wall, on your belly for first 25 into a fast turn and the on your back on the 2nd 25
6 x 50: on 1:00, #1 and #6 are easy scull, #2 to #5 are strong IM order (was 0:35 fly, 0:36 back, 0:41 breast, 0:32 free)
8 x 25: odds easy double-arm backstroke working on catch, evens fast IM order
1 x 50: easy scull
Main set - ZipFizz 200s (2,400 set)
5 x 200: on 2:30, make them: I used a snorkel and was 2:20, 2:21, 2:21, 2:24, 2:23
My best ever performance was on a 2:20 interval where I ranged from 2:05 to 2019 in 2015
My last attempt was January 2018 on 2:20 interval where I went 2:10, 2:10, 2:11, 2:09, 2:08
4 x 50: active recovery on 0:45, 0:50, 0:55, 1:45
3 x 200: on 2:45, descend swim, was 2:30, 2:22, 2:18
In January 2018, I went on 2:35 and was 2:15, 2:11, 2:06
4 x 50: active recovery on 0:45, 0:50, 0:55, 1:45
1 x 200: on 3:00, fast, was 2:18
My best ever was a 1:58 done back in October of 2015
In January of 2018, I was 2:04
4 x 50: active recovery on 0:45, 0:50, 0:55, 1:45
TOTAL: 4,150 yards
My times were humbling, but I'll try to start repeating this workout at least every 3 weeks to see how I'm improving. This main set slimmed down with a ~1,000 yard warmup makes for a quick and hard one hour workout that I'll often do when I'm traveling.