Training Like a Swimmer (Page 3)

swimming with people slightly faster is by far the best way to improve. It's really hard to be pushed on your own.
I find I also don't pace myself the same if I know the workout ahead of time. If I know there is 20x100 coming, I may hold back. Our coach never tells us what the next set is. And when he puts back to back hard sets, that's when you feel the good stuff happening.
I just started with a new group 2 weeks ago and I am already feeling the difference.

here's a set



I think it's USC trojans

That's one thing I also recall about our HS coaches--no way were we going to know what the sets were in advance. At most we might know the approximate yardage of the day's workout.I think that helps build mental toughness for the unpredictability of racing. When I was very young (maybe 10 or 11--he was also our youth club coach) I remember asking Bill (the Ironman) once how he knew how hard to go on each set (he often trained with us) and he astonished me when he said, "I'm always going hard on every rep in every set." To this day, I'm not sure I've achieved that...... Of course, in retrospect, Bill must have known what the workout was in advance (since he either wrote it or went over it with the other coach beforehand) so I'm sure at some level he was pacing himself! Ditto with one elite run coach I worked with at about 20....Once we did a 20-mile run with some tempo work in it. Then when we returned to the track where we had started, and suddenly we were doing 10 X 400m hard. One of those workouts you still remember 25 years later. But I know that helped tremendously with my confidence that I could pull a kick from somewhere even at the end of a long, hard race.

Anyway, not easy to replicate that if you train solo. When I go to master's, they don't write or show you the entire workout in advance, unless you ask. Usually I just get into a lane with people I (or the coach) think will push me and take it as they dish it out. I tend to be the slowest in the medium-fast lane (it's not a really high-powered group, but there are a small number of recent ex-college swimmers in the fast lane), or the fastest in the medium lane, so occasionally I find myself switching up or down a lane depending on the nature of the workout, who shows up, whether we're swimming SC or LC, and how I'm feeling. Actually I find I can get a good workout either solo or with others--it's just different. For shorter sets, easier to push with others. For longer, I think i do better quality efforts solo because I end up wasting time lapping/being lapped in a crowded lane.

Bill (or other coaches) if you are still out there doing tri (sometimes I suspect you are) and on this site, you can see what an impression you had on your young athletes. 46 now, still running and swimming (though only up to HIM so far), and I still remember those workouts, and tell my students and athletes the story of the "Special Prize", which you have probably long since forgotten!

Edited by Hot Runner 2015-09-25 8:56 PM

Is that yards or meters? If yards, that's insane, if meters then I don't think I could run that fast!