Subject: Who's Up for the Birthday Challenge? Oh my gosh! Talk about a blast from the past. I saw this article on Triathlete.com and it brought back painful memories - http://triathlon.competitor.com/2014/08/training/birthday-swim-workout_103873. Back when we did this it wasn't a challenge. It was a 100 x 100 workout we did twice a year as the final Saturday workout before we began to taper for the National Championships. Before long-course nationals we did it in a 50-meter pool, prior to short-course nationals we were in a 25-yard pool. Our format was a bit different than the website's, in the 50-meter pool we did it like this (short-course intervals were 10 seconds less): 1 - 5 @ 2:00 warm-up 6 - 10 @ 2:00 easy/hard build 11 - 20 @ 1:50 21 - 30 @ 1:45 2-minute nutrition/hydration break 31 - 40 @ 1:40 41 - 50 @ 1:35 51 - 60 @ 1:30 2-minute nutrition/hydration break 61 - 70 @ 1:25 71 - 80 @ 1:20 81 - 90 @ 1:15 91 - 95 @ 1:10 96 - 100 @ 2:00 cool-down The week before this workout, we did 80 x 100 in our specialty stroke or as Individual Medley for those of us that were IM specialists with a similar challenging interval. Ahhh, those were the days! I don't imagine many swim teams are doing this workout any longer however I can't imagine a better final preparation for an Ironman swim. It would absolutely get you ready mentally and if you are able to get through this workout, the 3.8K/2.4 mile IM swim would seem like a warm-up! So who's up for the challenge? |