Swim Camp

This last weekend we did a mini swim camp to finish up the first training block of the season. My swim has been feeling great lately, and others have commented on how my stroke has improved night and day. This weekend we put all that training to the test with a double Friday, double Saturday, and a single Sunday. We ended up swimming over 20k in those three days, and I ended up with just over 27k for the week. Prior to this the most I ever swam in a week was 25k so to do 20k in just three days was tough.

Friday was actually the worst day of the three. I am not sure if I was just to pumped up for the weekend, tired from writing lab reports all day, or maybe it was just one of those rough day. Either way I had absolutely no gas. The second swim consisted of struggling through some 400s, and praying the whole weekend was not going to be this bad.

Saturday was the biggest day, and we did two swim of approximately 4200 and 4800. I was in the zone for these and just focused on what ever intervals were in front of me and not worrying. We did a hard set of 50s and managed to swim a couple 35s (scm) which I can't complain about when my pb is 33.

Sunday was the final day and just consisted of 4100m. We did a lot of fins today as our arms were dying and ready to fall off. The very last thing of the camp though was a 200m for time. I went out hard giving everything I had knowing that 200m was nothing when I looked back on the whole weekend. I managed to swim 2:35ish which I think is a pb.

All in all the swim camp was excellent, and I am running on a mental high after completing it. This week is super easy to recover from all the training in the last few weeks and let it sink in. The next phase is going to involve some hard running and cycling and my first test (Santa Shuffle 5k at Victoria Park).

What did you do this weekend?

Midterms are done

Midterms are finally over which coincides perfectly with a small up in training. I am already seeing tons of improvements in my running and swimming, but haven't done any real tests on the bike yet. My 800m tt in the pool dropped a minute in 4 weeks (the first time I had to do a 400 and 200 afterwards so maybe some difference mentally). I am super excited by that, and I should only get faster as we start to increase the volume a bit. This weekend I did a run set of 3x1mile with 90 seconds rest and felt amazing (5:11, 5:15, 5:19). The last time I did mile repeats I did 5 with 5 minutes rest and only went 5:25 5:16 5:20 5:30 5:44. I am going to be doing the Santa Shuffle 5k in a couple weeks, and get a real test of where I am at. If I can run a pb this early in the season that will be awesome.

I hope everyone's training is also going well. Remember triathlon is a winter sport played out in the summer.