Retesting my CSS Swim Pace
>> Wednesday, December 31, 2014
I tweeted this on Monday morning:
Here's some of what I said about what CSS training is (and how to find your CSS pace) in my post last month:
They say to swim an all-out 400, rest and swim easy a bit after that, and then do an all-out 200. Find the difference between your time in the 400 and 200, and then divide that by 2 to get your CSS pace / 100.
For example, here are my numbers: I swam my 400 in 6:10. Then I did my 200 in 3:00. The difference between those is 2 times is 3:10. Divide that by 2, and my CSS training pace should be 1:35.
The idea is to NOT go "all out" for every interval swim, because that's less beneficial. But instead, swim your CSS pace and then take less rest. That way (supposedly), you're swimming at a pace that will help you become faster and build your endurance. Their website gives a few workouts to do based on your CSS number, so check it out here.
So on Monday, my all-out 400 was 5:55, and my 200 was 2:55. The difference between those is 3:00, so my CSS pace is now 1:30. Ouch. That's a big difference for me. I don't owe this improvement all to CSS, but it's been helping. As fast-swimming-buddy Robby B has said (the guy who turned me on to CSS), I'm showing some improvements because I'm simply hitting the pool more often than usual.
Oh, and I'm finally seeing some swim workout numbers plateau. Last Friday, I did that 40x50 swim workout I like to do (where the 50s are split up into sets of 5 with the last of each of those sets being "all out"), and my "all out" 50s felt good, but they were nearly a second slower (on average) than during the same workout 4 weeks earlier.
And in related at-the-Y tweets, THIS also happened:
Seriously, he just walked up to the urinal, reached up his shorts, and whipped it out to take a piss.
Posts
1 comments:
I've been doing the CSS thing as well after reading about it. When I did the test it said 1:52, which is a stupid time. I rounded that to 1:50 and can pretty well nail it as long as I like in a short course pool. But when they move the bulkhead and I swim 50m, I can only do 15 of them. Overall pace has improved a bit, but it mainly shows up going a little faster and feeling less tired. Planning to redo at the end of Jan and see where the pace goes to. I suspect trying 1:45 with 10 seconds rest now, isn't going to work so well. Lets see how it turns out next test.
Post a Comment