June 12, 2024
Windsor Athletic Club (West Windsor Township, New Jersey)
I have been doing Dave Salo's "Pulse Plot" test set (see this earlier post for a deeper description) going back to 2010. While I do it at all phases of my training, I particularly like to do it within about a week to 10 days of a big taper meet. Today marks eight days ahead of the start of the USMS Short Course Yards national championships and I had the opportunity to do this in a 25 yard pool, something I haven't trained much in since moving to London last year.
I was all kitted out with technology today, believing myself to be ready to do and track this set:
Sunnto 5 Peak watch set in open water mode worn on my right wrist, as that seems to have the clearest heart rate measurement on the watch face
Oura ring as secondary measure of heart-rate (to compare against the Sunnto) work on my left index finger
Finis Smart Goggles to capture my times
And then an old iPhone in a waterproof case which I was going to use to record my heartrate data as the set progressed
The technology almost worked perfectly ... except that the iPhone died during my 1500 standard warmup. I was faced with a dilemma. I had the time and interest in doing the 8 x 100 on 3:00 test set, but I typically have a diving board and pencil on deck to capture my heart rate at 0:10, 0:30 and 1:00 after each 100. My plan was to just type that data into an email on the iPhone ...
I considered just bagging the set and doing something differrent, not convinced I could remember the sequence of 24 heart rate readings (e.g., 3 readings after each 100).
But, I really wanted to do this ... so I did and then, after each 100, metronimically repeated the sequence of HR readings over and over again. As soon as I finished the set, I quickly dried my hands, ran/walked into the locker room, immediately typed these into an email on my current iPhone and then did my cool-down sets.
The resulting chart, when compared to approximately the same time period ahead of 2012 USMS Nationals and 2023 Canadian Nationals produced a graph unlike I've ever had before:
Typically, the variation is like seen between the red and the blue lines, with the slopes roughly similar ... but this result showed:
I maintained a much lower heart rate throughout the entire set, almost independent of speed. That should bode well for my longer races.
On the other hand, I couldn't quite achieve the peak speed that I had done earlier.
As I'd like to swim fast, my takeaway is that I need to rest more ... so that's what I'm going to do!
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