A Big Swim Last Week

... my biggest since Covid!

I had to look back through my training log: just before Covid hit, I was doing 1700 to 2300 yard swims in early 2020.

Before that at the end of November 2019, I had a 2600 yard swim just to pad my numbers for the month - I hit 30,000 yards that month because I was swimming 3 days/week being I had a foot injury (and most of those swims were 1500 to 2400 yards). I had 2 swims in Oct and Nov of 2019 of 2600 yards, and those were my longest swims all year. (And being I had a foot injury and was swimming a lot, 2019 was my PR swim year.) It looks like 2600 yards was my longest swim in years until last week.

2018 saw swim distances a little shorter on average: around 2000 yards, generally.

In 2017, any swim over 2000 yards was a BIG swim, as most were 1400 to 1900 yards.

I didn't swim mid 2015 through mid 2016 due to some elbow issues.

Feb 2015 saw a 2600 yard swim in a stretch of decent swimming.

2014 saw shorter, more sporadic swims RARELY over 2000 yards.

And then the years before that were all shorter and random swims. Like in 2011, I had a 5000 yard week, but that was 3 swims with only 1 at 2100 yards the the other 2 were decently shorter.

I had to go back to April of 2011 (PRE-KIDS) to find a swim longer than last week's swim. Last week, I swam 2900 yards on Tuesday, and 12.75 years ago, I swam 3100 yards. I was 0:12 short of 1 hour last week, and had I known that at the time, I probably would have swam another lap to make it an hour+.

My long swim last week was one of my favorite "go to" swim workouts which is "broken 3x400 and 3x200" that I wrote about in more detail last year. The guts of the workout is 1800 yards and it looks like this:

- 400
- 30 sec rest
- 2x200 with 15 sec rest between 200s
- 30 sec rest
- 4x100 with 15 sec rest between 100s

- 60 sec rest

- 200
- 30 sec rest
- 2x100 with 15 sec rest between the 100s
- 30 sec rest
- 4x50 with 15 sec rest between the 50s

Before doing that, I did a 200 yard warm-up.

Then the main set above to put me at 2000 yards total.

Then 4x75 of kick drills with a board which looks like 25 moderate, 25 hard, 25 easy, 0:15 rest. I do these at the end of EVERY swim lately.

Then an easy 100.

I grabbed a pull buoy for between my knees and added 200 of pulling (a drill I don't do that often because I have a strong-ish upper body and I don't feel the need to overwork that... but I don't know if that logic is sound).

And finally, I did a 300 yard cool down to put me at 2900 yards.

Here's what it looked like on my Garmin with my main set labeled:

WORKOUT NOTE: I could really shorten the rests to make it a "better" workout. As I explained in my post last year, it's just easy to remember cutting everything in half: 1:00 between the 2 groups of sets, 0:30 between the 400s or between the 200s, and 0:15 WITHIN the 400s and within the 200s. I often do slighly longer rests of 60, 40, and 20. I could also shorten them to 40, 30, 20; or even 30, 20, and 10 if I wanted to hate my life.