August 18th, 2024
After bonking on last Sunday's attempt at a 12,500-meter workout, I tried to prepare myself this week, through more sleep, better nutrition planning and with my workout plan, to rack up a 15,000-meter workout. This was my last confidence-building workout ahead of the August 31st Lake Windermere, end-to-end, 11-mile (~18 km) event. All signals pointed to me being ready:
So, I trekked on down to my favorite building in the entire Kingdom ...
(London Aquatic Centre)
... and, after a brief dynamic dryland warmup, I got right into my plan:
500 IM drill / kick - I took a big lesson from the prior week, when I bonked after only doing a 100 easy to warmup and then jumping on the pace early. I started out slowly today.
For the rest of the workout, I would take somewhere between 0:45 and 1:00 after each repeat, downing a Gu energy gel and sipping some of my electrolyte sports drink in that time.
Throughout most of the workout, I used a breathing pattern every 3 lenghts - first length every 3, second length every 3-2, third length every 3-2-2
1 x 1000 - cruise as 1 lap free, 1 lap backstroke - 15:01.7
2 x 1500 - cruise as 3 laps free (using the pattern), 1 lap backstroke - 21:18.9, 22:08.7
4 x 2000 - each done as 4 x 500 straight using that breathing pattern of 9 strokes free followed by 1 stroke backstroke - 30:02.3, 28:31.0, 28:17.1, 28:52.5
Up until that point, my main focus was on a steady stroke rate. According to my Suunto watch, I started at a rate of 22 to 24 strokes per minute on the first 5KM, then was very consistently at 26-27/minute through 12.5KM.
I decided to push the last 2,500 straight, keeping with the 9 free lengths - 1 backstroke length, and raised my stroke rate to 30-32 strokes per minute, averaging 1:21.6/100M for a time of 33:59.0
I am 99% sure this is the longest, single workout I have done since high school, and I'm not even sure if I went this far ever in my life. I do recall at the University of Texas one year we combined the men's and women's distance groups for three-hour sessions on Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons, but, even then, we were more in the range of 12-14,000 yards.
I finished this quite tired, but entirely satisfied, though unable to perform at anything else requiring a modicum of physicality the rest of the day.
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