A couple of great workouts

March has been a good month. The work I've been putting in since January is begining to show, both in terms of technique and in terms of speed, not to mention my endurance. I'm starting to get excited about the coming year and interested to see what I can do at my upcoming Olympic distance race.

Last night's spin and this morning's swim were no exception to the March trend. I managed to figure some things out that, hopefully, will help me make big strides.

The spin last night was the first time I've reached a cadence of 120 or higher without bouncing around on my seat like a two year old who's downed two espressos. We did 5 or 6 high cadence segments near the end of the workout, I managed to briefly hit 120 in the first few and in the last one I managed to hit 120 and stay above for the whole 20 seconds. 124 was the highest number to show.

In this morning's swim I finally twigged onto why the body roll is important. I'd thought it was just aquadynamics (is that a word?) but the rolling motion actually makes it easier to engage your core and use your abs as well as your arms and shoulders to pull you through the water. Rolling towards (free) or away from (backstroke) the stroke arms allows you to get leverage and a stronger push. I figured this out in the 6 kick/1pull segment at the end of the swim and I wanted to stay in and work it out. I'll have to swim this weekend just to give this another try!


Tuesday Spin:
12(ish)min w/u

5min ILD - 30sec per leg

10min tempo - big ring. Keep cadence over 90 and increase cadence or gears every 3min. Mostly managed to keep cadence up except the last minute when I dropped a gear

5 x 30sec standing (hardest gears), 30 sec seated

5 x 20sec highest possible cadence WITH control

Sure I forgot something!

Cool down then home.

Wednesday Swim:
2300m (no wonder I was tired!)

w/u
3 X:
100m easy swim
25m fly kick
50m one armed fly
25m fly (or at least several strokes)

Kick:
4 x 12.5m power kick, 37.5m free
4 x 37.5m free, 12.5 power kick
7 x 25m free moderate kick, 25m free power kick

Interesting techno-geek discussion on kick speed (swimmers moving to the idea that a high speed kick, like a high cadence spin in cycling, is actually better)

2 X:
25m back 6kick/1stroke, 25m back
25m free 6kick/1stroke, 25m free

2 X:
25m back 6kick/3stroke, 25m back
25m free 6kick/3stroke, 25m free

No time for cool down

Kris Chambers was subbing for Paul.