Steve in a Speedo?! Gross!

It was time for a little speed work at the end of last week. We'd just received a 1/2" of snow, so the sidewalks, trails, and the track would not be fast, so I opted for the treadmill.

I came across a treadmill 5K from exactly a year ago where I wasn't trying to be super fast: I started at 10.1 mph, worked my way up to 10.8 mph, and finished with a 17:55 5K. I figured I'd start a little faster at 10.3 mph and work my way up in a similar fashion, aiming to finish around 11+ mph.

So I started at 10.3 mph, and cranked up the pace by 0.1 mph every half mile. I started speeding up a bit "earlier" at mile 2.3: I was at 10.8 mph, up to 10.9 shortly after, 11.0 around mile 2.8, and 11.1 for the last 0:45 or so. I was being worked, but it didn't feel too hard. I THOUGHT I was going to end up in the lower 17s for a finishing time, and I felt GREAT about that. But I actually finished at 17:33 - I had mis-calculated something in my head pre-run. Oh well.

After a 1.2 mile cool-down.

Pace and HR slowly climbing throughout.

Showing a quick step off the treadmill after the 5K effort, and my HR zones.

My half-mile splits looked like this:

2:54, 2:52, 2:51, 2:49, 2:47, 2:44, 0:32 = 17:33.7

I had my treadmill tempo 5K PR just over 2 years ago, and I ran 17:07 by starting at 10.5 mph, quickly getting it up to 10.7 mph, and then holding it at 10.8 mph for most of it before speeding up more as I got closer to the end. Next time I do a hard run like this, I start off faster!

Anyway, it was still a decent end to the week after starting the week with a long (and decently fast) treadmill run.

My swim this past week was ODD. The pool was still on a different "J-Term" schedule, so it wasn't open when I needed it to be early in the morning. So I didn't go early (which is when I've swam my last 2-3 years of workouts!).

Instead, I lifted weights REALLY well - it was one of my biggest upper body days EVER. I did 9 SOLID sets for everything for my upper body, which is something I've only done 1 or 2 times over the last decade. A quick workout for me is 4-5 sets, a "standard" workout is 6 sets, and a good workout is 7 sets. Sometimes I push myself to 8 sets on the weekend, but RARELY ever 9 sets. This was a hard 78 minutes of upper body!

I had lunch, prepped and taught class, and then swam in the late afternoon, which is NEVER when I hit the pool. It just happened to work out for me that day...

... and I had the swim of my life!

I expected it to be crappy after lifting so hard earlier in the day, but apparently enough time had passed that I didn't feel any extra fatigue in my back/chest/arms as I was pulling. I busted out a simple pyramid workout that I commonly do: 100, 200, 300, 400, 300, 200, and 100 yards:

Below were my splits. When I saw that 3:01 pop up for my first 200, I figured I was on my way to killing myself by going out too hard. But then my 300 was decent, and my 400 was KILLER - I'm usually floating around 6:30 for the 400, and this came it at 6:09! And then my final 200 was 3:00 FLAT when I haven't been under 3:00 in a 200 in YEARS!

Jan 2025:

1:25
3:01 (1:32, 1:29)
4:38 (1:35, 1:34, 1:29)
6:09 (1:31, 1:33, 1:35, 1:30)
4:36 (1:34, 1:33, 1:29)
3:00 (1:31, 1:29)
1:26

Compare those numbers to a "good swim" that I had last month:

Dec 2024:

1:29
3:09 (1:35, 1:34)
4:45 (1:38, 1:34, 1:33)
6:22 (1:37, 1:37, 1:36, 1:32)
4:44 (1:36, 1:38, 1:30)
3:06 (1:36, 1:30)
1:27

Last month, I was very happy with that 6:22 400 and then the 300 and 200 after that. But over those 7 splits, all were faster this week: 4, 8, 7, 13, 8, 6, and 1 sec.

Here are the 3 previous sets of splits from the last 3 times I did that workout before Dec:

Nov 2024:

1:30
3:10 (1:38, 1:32)
4:50 (1:38, 1:40, 1:32)
6:32 (1:40, 1:39, 1:38, 1:35)
4:50 (1:40, 1:34, 1:36)
3:10 (1:37, 1:33)
1:28

1:30
3:14 (1:40, 1:34)
4:54 (1:40, 1:38, 1:36)
6:28 (1:38, 1:37, 1:42, 1:35)
4:48 (1:39, 1:37, 1:32)
3:10 (1:35, 1:35)
1:29

Oct 2024:

1:32
3:16 (1:39, 1:37)
4:53 (1:38, 1:40, 1:35)
6:36 (1:38, 1:41, 1:41, 1:36)
4:54 (1:41, 1:40, 1:33)
3:15 (1:42, 1:33)
1:30

The point is that no recent time was CLOSE to what I did this week. Was it lifting weights before? Doing it later in the day? Being surrounded by collegiate swimmers and not other early-rising old guys like myself? (I think it had a lot to do with that last one, honestly!)

So I looked back in my training log to some pre-pandemic workouts when I was hitting the pool a lot. November 2019 is still my swimming PR at exactly 30,000 yards, whereas now I'm covering about 35,000 yards over THREE months of swimming. I did this workout twice in that PR swimming month (and I swam a lot in the months leading up to that month as well so I had GOOD swim fitness), and here were my splits:

Nov 2019:

1:26
3:04 (1:32, 1:31)
4:44 (1:35, 1:35, 1:33)
6:22 (1:34, 1:37, 1:36, 1:34)
4:42 (1:34, 1:33, 1:35)
3:01 (1:31, 1:30)
1:26

1:33
3:12 (1:34, 1:38)
4:50 (1:35, 1:37, 1:37)
6:28 (1:35, 1:37, 1:38, 1:37)
4:53 (1:36, 1:41, 1:35)
3:06 (1:32, 1:34)
1:28

EVERYTHING was faster this week, except I tied with my final 100 from the first workout. Holding on to ANY numbers from my "bigger swimming days" of pre-pandemic is insane!

So what does this tell me? I think that I can be forcing myself to swim harder. I'm not sandbagging because I dind't constantly have SUPER fast final splits. But maybe I just need to keep the effort higher throughout my workouts. And I think there was a lot to be said for trying to "keep up" with collegiate swimmers in the lanes next to me instead of random retirees getting in their swim before the pool fills up with college kids. So I don't need to be stuck on "I have to swim at THIS time" and instead work in my workouts when they fit best for that day. Maybe I'll have some speedy young adults next to me that will help me push my effort!