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 - 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+
Today - Oct 25, 2022 - 2:31.9, 2:30.8, 2:30.2, 2:27.7, 2:23.5
After finally feeling like myself again on the 4th and 5th 200s, I did a 350 cool-down and then went into a set of 5 x (200 - 100) on 5:00 where the 100s were always easy and the 200s were fast and broken after #1:
Straight - 2:11.0
Broken at 100 for 0:10 - 2:07.7
Broken at 50s for 0:10 - 2:03.8
Broken at 50 & 150 for 0:10 - 2:06.7
Broken at 25, 75, 125 and 175 for 0:10 - 2:01.1
For both sets of 200s, I wore my FINIS Smart Goggles and then downloaded the data once home, played around with it in Excel to create this nice summary:
What's interesting to note about the backstroke efforts is that the way I got faster was principally the second 100 and most notably on the last 50. I think that's a reflection of me both getting fully warmed up, and of me getting into the groove of my stroke as the set went on.
The Broken 200 free splits aren't as comparable, given the varying rest periods across the set, but this will be a good baseline to compare against when I repeat this workout.