Not That Again. Damn 10x100's.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Workout started like every other cold winter morning. Get down to our bathing suits, hop in the shower and run to the pool before we freeze to death! I was a bit sleepy at first and took a nice and easy warm up to get the kinks worked out from yesterday's afternoon workout.
Warmed Up
400 (200 free / 200 IM 50 drill / 50 swim)
3x150's 50 kick / 50 drill / 50 swim. I quikly took a pee break so I missed a 50 (400/800)
400 Pull (200 DPS w/ paddles, 200 w/o paddles build by 50) (400/1200)
6x25's working underwater streamlined (150/1350)
Then word came down from above that our team and this workout would go against the Geneva Convention rules on unusual and cruel punishment and have us do the 10x100's all out sprint "bench mark" or "break through" set. The idea of these benchmark test sets to evaluate ability, find specific training zones, and plot future training targets. Which in Masters swimming and the amount of people we have on our team is complete bullshit. As a Master swimmer I know that I need to rely on myself for goal setting and setting any training targets as opposed to age group or college swimming when a coach would sit down and work with each swimmer. For us it's more like the coach writes them down on this spreadsheet never to be seen again or at least not to the next time we do the set. I decided to look at each one of the three reasons for doing a test set or bench mark set such as this.
1. Evaluate Ability - This may be used by a coach to move up one swimmer from let's say the slow lane to the fast lane. I noticed for example that going 2nd in my lane 10 seconds behind the 1st person I was catching up to most of the first group except for one swimmer. My thought was that maybe that swimmer should move up a lane group. I only noticed cuz' I was using other swimmers who left ahead of me as benchmarks to how I was doing. And also as motivation to keep at it. Played the catch up game to keep the drudgery of swimming 10x100's.
2. Find Specific Training Zones - I'll interepet that as setting intervals in future sets. You'd think that a coach would see his/her swimmers on a regular enough basis to be able to set intervals without the pure nonsence of 10x100's.
3. Plot Future Training Targets - Going back on Evalute Ability the coaches always say that we should use this set to check in with ourselves to see how we are in our training. I guess that means after swimming the set I should take my times and think about what I'd like to do in future versions of this set. Or maybe what splits would I like to hold in my 1,000 and 1,500/1,650.
Hating the set I got to admit I did feel like I held my own better then previous past attempts at this set. I was a lot more consistent if not faster. Then again the interval changed a bit and was a bit easier this go around. In the past I've done this set both on the 3:00 and the 3:30. Today we started at 3:00 but at the 3rd or 4th one moved to the 3:30.
The first 100 I came in at 1:04. The second 100 I came in at 1:02. Then after that I pretty much held a 1:03 for all of them. And by pretty much as I touched the wall and turned my head a few times it was just flipping to the 1:03 as I'd see the 2 for a brief glimpse. So a few 1:02-highs. I felt stronger a bit longer and didn't have my usual 100 that I sorta blow off and recover but then again it was on 3:30 and not 3:00. But even then since I do keep my workouts on this handy dandy blog I did go to a few times when I did the 3:30 inteval and still had that one 100 that I dog it. So maybe if I was to evaluate my ability I'd say I am doing well, feeling strong and being consistently on pace. Let's just hope that as my last time doing this set was March of 2009 that we all take a nice long breather and do the set again in March of 2011. (1000/2350)
Afterwards I warmed down a 100. Should have done more but wanted to come home and get warm and eat! (100/2450)
MTD SCY 17,300