"No Minds" Swim Workout

Thursday, I did a HARD swim workout. Well, it was short, but 5x100 of it were ALL OUT with lots of rest. According to searching through my blog and my training log, I'd done it 5 times before, and 3 of those were before kids, and the most recent was nearly 4 years ago. SO IT WAS ABOUT TIME TO DO IT AGAIN.

It's called "No Minds," and don't ask me why. All I remember is that it was a workout in Triathlete Magazine (late 2009 or early 2010) - it was a "VO2 Max" sort of a workout. It calls for a 1000 warm up, then right into 250 at "race pace" (with no rest - so 1250 straight), then a 2:00 rest, and then 5x100 every 4:00 (so LOTS of rest). The 100s should get slower as you go because they should all be ALL OUT.

I've been feeling really REALLY "stagnant" in the pool lately, and I hoped an effort like this would help snap me out of that. I looked back to some previous times, but I didn't have them memorized when I hit the pool: I knew I did the 100s around 1:20 or just under. Here were the exact numbers:

- January 2010: 1:22.6 / 100 average
- March 2010: 1:18.4 / 100 average
- January 2011: 1:18.0 / 100 average
- November 2013: 1:19.2 / 100 average
- May 2014: 1:21.3 / 100 average

(That last time doing this workout was shortly after getting back in the pool after spraining my ankle, so there's no wonder that was slower.)

Bro-in-Law Matt, me, and my cutie from my March 2010 post.

First of all, that's a LONG warm up for me. I usually do 100 or 200 before busting our some intervals or a ladder swim, so 1250 of straight swimming is the farthest I've gone without stopping in YEARS. Truly. Maybe since joining this gym in 2014. But I kept a nice consistent pace without trying: after a (typically) faster first 100, the final 900 of the 1000 warm up were all 1:41-1:43/100 (16:56 total). My 250 at "race pace" averaged 1:34/100 (3:57 total). Then I took a long break and prepared myself. We were circle swimming now-and-then throughout this workout, so my rest times weren't 100% even - I often took off when it worked best based on who was in my lane. (Less rest between 3 and 4, but more between 4 and 5.) Effort #4 got a little muddled up by circle swimming, but that's the only one I can blame on someone else.

My first 100 felt good, and it was surprisingly fast! 1:14!!! I think I've only swam 2 swim meets faster than that (both 1:10), and I was faster at my swim-off with Devon a few years ago (1:09). So that was my 4th fastest 2 laps ever! And then the times slowed up. As they should. I swam:

- 1:14.95
- 1:16.19
- 1:16.73
- 1:20.43
- 1:20.90
- Average of 1:17.84 / 100

So that *seems* like a nice PR and that I should be happy. But I was a very different (read: slower) swimmer back when I did this workout years ago. 2014 was when I started swimming more seriously, so the first 3 times I did this workout, I was basically doing 1500-2000 yard swims whenever I felt like it. (And "mileage" was much lower back then: I swam less in 2011 and 2012 COMBINED compared to last year - 115,000 for 2011 & 2012, and 140,000 last year.) When I did this workout in 2013, it was when I was on my biggest break from running with my quad/hip issue, so I was looking to find a way to push myself in different ways. And in 2014 when I did this workout, I had a sprained ankle, so I was just getting back into the pool. Had I done this workout in late 2014 or early 2015, I could have been around 1:15 or so. Maybe I'll try this workout again just before triathlon season to see if I can improve those times.

* SIDENOTE: The Blogger "search" function totally let me down. It's like it didn't search back after a certain date or after XXX many posts. It was a pain to track down when I did these workouts last. After I realized it was acting up, I copied/pasted and searched for an exact phrase from an old post, and it had 0 results. I hope it's a temporary glitch. It SUCKS. I used my blog all the time to look up old workouts, and this would be a big blow.