No, Cori, that's not Cascading Style Sheets, if they're still a thing.
As my swim times have improved, and since I signed up for a goal race, I've become more curious about the best way to improve my swim. Steve in a Speedo, one of the people usually up near the top of my blog roll has been wondering the same thing. He found a Swim Smooth test that talks about determining a training speed. You can find it here. Thanks Steve!
In summary, it works like this. Get warmed up, swim 400 m fast trying to be consistent. (hint, I'm not, as you'll see) Rest a bit, then swim 200 m. Do some math, and you end up with a 100 m swim pace.
Michelle very kindly offered to take a break from her own swimming adventures (she's doing great, btw) and time my laps. This is how it went.
400 m, total time 7:03 total, lap times rounded a bit.
50 m - 50 seconds
100 m - 50 seconds
150 m - 53 seconds
200 m - 55 seconds
250 m - 54 seconds
300 m - 59 seconds (someone joined the lane without checking)
350 m - 58 seconds (blew a flip turn
400 m - 54 seconds
200 m, total time 3:20
50 m - 45 seconds
100 m - 50 seconds
150 m - 54 seconds
200 m - 51 seconds.
So my CSS pace is 1:52 per 100 m. One of the suggested workouts I'll try next week is 15 x 100 m at that pace, with 10 seconds recovery after each interval. Given what they say about the training, and what I know of my own times, this pace seems right in the ballpark. Let's see. The trick will be trying to swim consistently at that pace.
Sometime late January I'll do another test and see if there has been any improvement. Michelle has taken some video of me, and yes, I can see ways to improve my stroke. Funny how video shows all the flaws if you look, regardless of what you thought you were going. Flirting with the center line, sheesh.
I was thinking back over the work year, and it's just disappeared. Gone in a flash. I'm not sure where. I'm sure looking forward to some time off over Christmas, then it will be into a hard slog till the end of March.
No core yet today. Later.
It was nice for a change to finally help YOU out, see how it's done and help you obtain fun statistics to figure out your Critical Swim Speed. The synchronized swimmers (gals and a guy) were also fun to watch.
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