Wet Intervals at the Track

It's been raining a lot here in MN lately. I've been lucky to avoid MOST of the rain, but my intervals last week were in the middle of 12 hours of rain - no avoiding it.

Well... off to the track! I guess.

I was thinking about doing some 800s and 400s, and thought I'd do 4x800 then 4x400, but I saw I did that workout recently in early May. So I went for the more brutal 4 x (800 meters then 400 meters) with 2:00 rest between everything that I haven't done since early April.

I didn't look back at any previous times, so I just wanted to go suffer. I figured times could be slow in the rain and with the high humidity, so there were not specific time goals. Just pain.

I was PRETTY happy with my first 800 clocking in at 2:36 - I recalled starting with a 2:41 last year, and a 2:39 earlier this year. So maybe the rain wasn't getting to me as much as I thought! My socks didn't start slipping around in my shoes until about half-way through the workout, and I didn't feel like my shoes were soaked through and heavy until about the last 2 intervals.

I had a nice descend going in my 800s as I started my final 800, and I told myself "forget about the fact that you have another 400 left after this - run this 800 HARD and then just do what you can for that last 400!" Well, I lost my perfect descend for my 800s by 0.1 seconds. Damn.

1:17 + 1:18 = 2:36.5
1:14.1
1:17 + 1:17 = 2:34.9
1:13.2
1:17 + 1:16 = 2:33.3
1:13.6
1:17 + 1:15 = 2:33.4
1:14.5

Gross.


Yep, that looks about right.


This is funny. The 8 BLUES are my intervals, GREEN is walking
between, and ORANGE is "idle." You can see the later intervals
have more "idle" time as I was finishing each and dying.


Soaked back home.


So wet lately that the neighbors pile of mulch (IN THE SUN) is now a mushroom farm.

And then that night, I watched the Olympic Trials, and saw the 10,000 meters on the track which had men going 25 laps with lap times all faster than my 1 or 2 lap intervals:

Depressing. :)

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A Bunch of 50s in the Pool

I've been getting bored with my swimming, so I decided to bust out an old workout earlier this week: I was going to do a bunch of 50s! I decided this during my warm-up, and I figured I'd do 30x50. Then after starting the workout, I told myself I could do 35x50.

I didn't look back to previous versions of this workout before I was at the pool, but I THOUGHT I had it pretty much memorized. So I told myself that I'd do sets of 5 50s that looked like this:

1. 50 easy
2. 50 moderate, breathing every 3rd stroke
3. 25 hard / 25 easy
4. 50 moderate, breathing every 5th stroke
5. 50 all out.

10 sec rest between the 50s, and 35 sec between the sets of 5

I quickly learned that I started with "easy" meaning "easy FOR A 50" but quickly turned that into "just EASY." My rest time also needed to include a bit of that first 50.

In the past, I remember the 2nd 50 of "breathing every 3rd stroke" feeling just like "normal" swimming, but I had a little trouble keeping to breathing every 3rd stroke this time. I've been breathing every 2 strokes a lot over the last year whenever I need a little extra breath, and I found myself defaulting to that sometimes - "oh, I'm running out of air a bit... I guess I'll only take 2 strokes here before getting some air." No! Oops!

The biggest surprise while in the pool was how hard the "breathing every 5th stroke" was. I felt like I was being tortured during my first rep of that! Literally! I nearly had a mini freak-out because I was quite uncomfortable with my face in the water as I was running out of air! This workout was GOOD for me.

I took splits for every 50, and here they are, with the 5th in each row being the "all out" 50s:

43, 44, 46, 45, 41
44, 45, 45, 47, 40
45, 46, 46, 45, 40
46, 45, 45, 44, 40
45, 47, 45, 44, 41
48, 45, 47, 44, 42
49, 46, 47, 44, 42

Average "all out" 50: 0:40.86

Swim pace over the 1 hour workout.


Highlighting the 7 sets of 5 50s.

Afterwards, while logging my workout, I looked back to other times I'd done 50s like this. I THOUGHT the last time was pre-pandemic, but I did this a year ago and kept ALL of my fast 50s under 40 sec (when NONE of my fast 50s were under 40 this week).

And pre-pandemic (6+ years ago), I did this workout with my fast 50s averaging under 0:37.

Looking back farther, I did this workout 7 years ago with all of my fast 50s being between 0:35 and 0:37. Ouch. I've lost a lot of speed in the pool over the years. Swimming once/week sure isn't making me any faster, and my workouts have been trending LONGER and SLOWER over time as well. So I'm missing out on that more explosive speed.

p.s. For reference, here's the "real" workout - it's what I said about that workout once I looked up what I was told to do years ago:

Main Set: 50x50 (aka 10 rounds of 5x50) All on 50” or 10” rest (50” is lowest interval, take 10” if you’re touching the wall past 45”), then 30 secs rest between sets of 5.

• #1: Easy
• #2: Breathe every 3rd stroke
• #3: 25 fast/25 easy
• #4: Breathe every 5th stroke
• #5: FAST!

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Friday Funny 2313: Funny Animals

Lots more funnies on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com.

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Friday Funny 2312: Innuendos

More funny things on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com.

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Friday Funny 2311: 'Clean' Insults

Check out more funnies on SportsAndLaughs.tumblr.com.

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Making Up for Lost Workouts: a Daily ‘Intensity Minutes’ PR

I posted last weekend about a recent 4 day / 3 night trip up to the North Shore about 10 days ago. Between some family events on Thursday and then being gone that Friday through Monday, I missed 2 bike rides - my only 2 bike workouts for the week. I sort of piled on the workouts on Tuesday after we got back to make up for it.

A week that petered out followed by a BIG start to the next week.

That Tuesday, I biked to the gym to swim, then I swam for an hour, then lifted for an hour, and then biked back home. That was nearly 300 “intensity minutes” before 9 a.m. Then I decided to go for a 22 mile ride that afternoon, and then I took Henry on a short ride after that, and then did some walking too. I ended the day with 514 intensity minutes:

Everything until some walking to end the day.

Whew. I was wiped the next day!!

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