Swimming with Billy

In more ways than one, as you can see by my lack of posts I've not been around much. Quite a lot has happened in my little life. Firstly I had an enforced lay off from swimming (and all other types of activity) because I had "men's health problems". Thankfully they were discovered in time, but I needed some surgery and other stuff. So no swimming for a while. Then secondly (and still on going) the company I work for is trying to self-destruct, and it's doing so in a quite unpleasant way. So whilst I've been back in the pool for a while, the work situation has clouded my internet enthusiasm.

Sadly the work fiasco is still on going, but it is time to get that part of my life back in order... and hence a post or two.

So what's been happening swimming wise? Well the end of last year I hit two land mark times (50 fly and 100 fly) and prior to my illness I'd decided that this was the year I was going to make a mark in these events, well I'd set myself a serious challenge for the 100 fly. And then illness in January, so I thought my challenge for the rest of this year would be to get back to some level of competitive fitness.

Cutting a long story short, my first meet back was Scarborough. I really like Scarborough and it was a good time for a competition. And I swam okay. No, I actually swam better than okay considering the circumstances. I won't bother with the times but they were pretty close to last year's times (in fact overall I was some 2/3 seconds quicker this year). So that was a good one. Then I managed to get picked to be in the Buxton Crusader team and swum the IM relay (50 fly), free relay (50 free) and the individual 100 fly. And of those, hand timed, I managed to hit my pre-illness goal for this year - I was well buzzing after that! And couldn't wait until Blackpool last month.

And Blackpool was brilliant. If you get a chance to swim there - go, it's a really good modern pool. Swim wise I got three PBs and two near PBs. The crowning glory was the 100 fly where I beat my new hand-timed record with a 1:08.45. I was chuffed to bits, and now want to see if I can get into the 1:06 area - that and a decent 50 free, before the end of the year.

This last seven months have been "interesting" and I now need to move on, as they say... 1:06 here we come! (I hope)

Not quite the first swim of the year (that was last Friday), but this was the first Swim Fit session and it was pretty tiring in a "good" way. It was a bit of fun, but it was a stressful fun. The main set was a series of 50M repeats, starting on a turn around of 60s then each repeat going on a turn around 1 second quicker than the previous. So you start with 60s, then 59s, then 58s... until you get to a point where you can't make the turn around. I got as far a 39s so managed 21 repeats. It was a funny set because it felt okay until right near the end when it just fell apart (probably on repeat 20).

Warm Up
1 x 200M EZ
7 x 50M (25 fast kick, 25 Popov)

Main Set
'n' x 50M descending turn around from 60s

Warm Down
1 x 100M

Hey, here's a surprise, I've not posted for an absolute age. Next week, New Year and all that, we'll see what can be done about that. For now though, you can watch this little expose. The Swim Fit Stockport group went-a-swimming at the South Yorkshire Masters a few weeks back and I put some of it to music. Watch and enjoy if you wish...

Two rather different sessions today... this lunchtime was a "sprint" set and this evening a... well I don't know what you'd call it, but it was definitely a session.

The sprint one was physically tiring, once the lactate builds up (like immediately) that's it - the body rejects pretty much everything else:

Warm Up
1 x 200 EX
8 x 50 kick (odds fast, evens build to fast)

Main Set
3 x 50 Max from dive in 5 minutes
2 x 25 Bungie cord swim
4 x 25 Max from dive
2 x 25 drag alert (tow your partner to the other end of the pool)
1 x 50 Max from dive

Warm down
1 x 100 EZ

Killer lactate set, my first 50 was 28.9, second 32.5 (fly) and third 30.5 by then I was beyond caring. The final 50 was okay 28.9 again. Craig has started having a go at my turnover. And I've got to say that at the moment it's not great, when "sprinting" I seem to have lost that feel for the water that I used to have.

This evening with the Buxton kids, a different sort of set (and boy am I going to be broken tomorrow...)

Warm up
1 x 800 FR

Main set
20 x 50 on 1:00 (odds fly, evens free)
1 x 600 (100 fly, 100 free, 100 fly, 100 back, 100 fly, 100 breast)
5 x 25 fast (free, fly, free, fly, free)

Warm down
1 x 100

What a killer main set. The 20 x 50 was okay, the fly wasn't great but the free felt good - that feel of the water was there for this set (but then I wasn't going quick). I spent the whole time breathing to the left and focusing on getting that hand/arm catching "really" well.

I need to do some more experimenting here, but those repeats where I did a more straight arm recovery with my right arm, the better my catch was with my left.

The 600M was, well as grim as could be expected. Tomorrow I'll ache, that's for sure!

Er no, I don't think so...

A couple of weeks back were the British Short Course Masters in Sheffield. For a number of reasons I didn't go two of the SwimFit group did - Craig and Martin. Martin swims with us and Craig takes the sessions, and both are very quick. Anyway they entered the "young persons relay" (72+ age group) and won with a time of 1:35.70 which is a British record.

Anyway here's the video of their swim...

Oh the title of this post is the same as theirs on YouTube - average? Er no I don't think so!

We did a session last week (SwimFit) that was shear hell. Actually a lot of last week was horrible. I happened to mention to Craig that we did a grim lactate set in the previous triathlon session (75 best effort + 125EZ repeat 6 times). And I think that inspired him, so the main session was four lots of:

1 x 50M kick fast
1 x 200M free (2:40-45 pace for me)
1 x 25M submerged starting block push

Now the grim bit was the starting block push. Basically each swimmer had a starting block upside down in the pool and had to push it from shallow to deep on the odd repeats and back again on the evens. That was grim enough but the best/worst bit is a friend of mine RT (a chap I work with) comes once a week to these sessions and came to this one. Now to be very fair to him, he's not the best swimmer in the world, he is getting better but swimming (for him) is hard work.

So we set off and me being quicker finished my first two repeats and was on my third 200M swim when RT was heading back to the shallow end with the block. Now for those of you who don't know, Grand Central has a clever contraption the can vary the depth of the "shallow end" from very shallow to 2.4M (which is the depth of the centre of the pool). Usually the shallow end is 1.2M so the clever contraption, about 10M our slopes down from 1.2 to 2.4M.

When pushing the block to the deep end this is "fine", but coming back the other way... well lets just say that poor RT got stuck - got the block to the bottom of the ramp, took a deep, swum down to the block, pushed it about half way up, stopped, came to the surface for a breath, swum down, rescued the block from the bottom of the pool, pushed it up about half way, stopped, came to the surface... repeat as often as you like.

Now I am not laughing - okay I am, because it was funny. But poor RT knew after the first attempt this just wasn't going to happen. And you could see his dilema of not wanting to breathe, but needing to, and then seeing his look as gravity took hold of the block...

Just to let you know I did the decent thing and helped him on this and his second up hill struggle. To be very fair to him, it is very hard work (especially if you don't swim that well) and he never gave up. But without help he'd still be there now.

If he has nightmares about swimming now, I wouldn't be at all surprised!!

Tonight's triathlon set was an easy session (that's what Gary said anyway). Actually it was in terms of work load (1600M isn't much), the main set was Gary's old favourite hyper-toxic (3, 5, 7, 3 breathing pattern). Just for fun(?!) I was given the option of 3, 5, 7 ... 9 (yuk). I did about four like that but it wasn't enjoyable.

As far as a session goes it wasn't that hard, the send off for me was 1:45 and I think each repeat was around 1:20.

Warm up:
1 x 600M

Main set:
10 x 100 hyper-toxic (3, 5, 7, 3/9) on 1:45

Warm down:
2 x 100 IM EZ

Oh I've got to get a grip really.  This poor blog has been rather ignored for the past few weeks/months.  It's not that I haven't been swimming, or had swimming thoughts and stuff - I have, it's just that there's been so much "real" work to do that additional hours in front of my PC just doesn't fill me with enthusiasm.

So here's an early new years resolution - to get this up and running again!

I hate it - enough said.

(Posted for someone who occasionally reads what I say, it'll make no difference as we'll be doing 3, 5, 7, 3 hundreds again).

A long time ago, I did a set in Stockport where I wore fins and paddles. In that set, by virtue of these mechanical devices, I just sneaked in under 30 seconds for 50M free. That was before I started entering competitions. And I remember talking with a (much older) chap who said I should enter Masters events, I retorted that I couldn't swim "fast" because I had never broken the 30s barrier. But on that day I did, but only with some help from my "friends".

Fast forward to last Thursday, I was completely full of cold so had a shorter/less intense session, but we ended with a 50M free wearing paddles and fins again. Martin went 24.something and I went 25.high with a bad start. What's hopefully interesting about that is that I remembered my first sub-30 swim (above) and thought I just couldn't understand what it'd feel like to swim _that_ fast. And here I am again, through artificial aids, I hit a sub 26s time for the first time ever. And that felt odd, and again I can't (yet) understand what I need to do to achieve this kind-of speed, and may be I won't but with a new record of 27.59 "unaided" it looks like my next "challenge" is to get really quick - sub 27s. Perhaps I've bitten off more than I can chew, but it's time to step up to the plat...