14 November 2022
Our measly, maybe 10cm, first snowfall of the season must have scared away the swimmers as I arrived at my local LA Fitness to find the pool pristinely empty. I grabbed the center lane and enjoyed pushing through a repeat of my "Back Base" test set and the same Broken 200 freestyle set I did a few weeks ago. I did a bit more warming up and cooling down between sets to make the entire workout 4,750 yards, but the two main sets remained:
5 x 200 backstroke on 3:10 - my "Back Base" test set - aiming to hold as fast a pace as possible, similar to my 3 x 300 freestyle "Base Pace" test set:
Oct 7, 2022 - 2:32, 2:29+, 2:29, 2:29, 2:28, 2:26
Oct 2015 - 2:25, 2:23, 2:23, 2:22, 2:20+
Oct 25, 2022 - 2:31.9, 2:30.8, 2:30.2, 2:27.7, 2:23.5
Nov 14, 2022 - 2:27.0, 2:25.6, 2:25.6, 2:26.6, 2:24.8
After three hard days of training, my arms felt like lead, so I was pretty pleased with the results. I next went into 5 x (200 - 100) on 5:00 where the 100s were always easy and the 200s were fast and broken after #1:
Straight - 2:13.6
Broken at 100 for 0:10 - 2:07.6
Broken at 50s for 0:10 - 2:03.7
Broken at 50 & 150 for 0:10 - 2:05.4
Broken at 25, 75, 125 and 175 for 0:10 - 2:00.7
When I got home, I pulled down the CSV file from my FINIS Smart Goggles and did a quick comparison of my times, showing more improvement on my backstroke than my freestyle, but good results all around:
