Did you swim today?

[Nate]

Let's give this a go. A simple question - did you swim today? If so, what did you do? How many lengths did you do? What did you wear? How was it? etc. etc. I got the idea from a Facebook page I'm a fan of where people post their daily swims and inspires others to get swimming - hopefully this thread will do the same.

I started doing these kinda posts on the 'swimming clubs' thread but feel like we need to broaden out and I wanna see what you are doing in the pool and encourage others to get their budgie smugglers/banana hammocks/nut huggers on their hips and into the pool! (Or sea...or other swimmable waters)

So today's swim was a nice one...

WARM UP
200 swim
200 kick
4 x 50 drill
200 swim

MAIN SET
{repeat 3 times}

100 swim
200 swim
300 swim
50 easy

COOL DOWN
250 pull with paddles

Total of 3000m wearing my black, white and red 'Speedo' trunks - the same ones as my profile pic.

[speedodemon]

Very impressive. I thought I was doing well at 2000 metres (40 X 50 metres) 3 times a week. All that turning in a 25 metre pool for you! I really enjoy the 50 metre ones out here. I should improve my technique but I just do it for the love of the water and speedos plus all round fitness. Keep up the good work. I do think the great suits we see on this site should get worn in the pool or waves.

[Bullseye]

Hey Nate,
how long do you spend on that workout? Amazing!

Speedodemon, you got me beat too! I also am limited to a 25m pool, and limited on the time I can swim. I only do 1000 (40X25) four or five times a week. Maybe this summer I will find time to do some longer swims, and improve on my time as well.

Keep up the good work, guys!

[Nate]

Very impressive. I thought I was doing well at 2000 metres (40 X 50 metres) 3 times a week. All that turning in a 25 metre pool for you! I really enjoy the 50 metre ones out here. I should improve my technique but I just do it for the love of the water and speedos plus all round fitness. Keep up the good work. I do think the great suits we see on this site should get worn in the pool or waves.

The nearest 50m pool for me is a bout 45 minute drive, I go there every now and then to treat myself haha I do prefer a 50m myself.

2000m is a great distance, do you stop after every 50? When I first started swimming again to improve my endurance I would do a 'pyramid', so I would swim 50m, then I would swim 100m, then back to 50. Then I'd push it to 50-100-150-100-50, it really helped improve my stamina in the pool and it's surprising how much distance you can cover doing each pyramid as the middle distance gets higher.

Hey Nate,
how long do you spend on that workout? Amazing!

Every session is 90 minutes long, most sets are on the pace clock so you don't get too much rest but I gotta be honest - I can never remember what the times are, and I very rarely hit the times unless their 25's or 50's.

I do, however, remember most of the times of todays set as it was mostly 100's with shorter and shorter rest periods...

WARM UP
400 swim
200 kick
4 x 50 drill
200 swim

MAIN SET
6 x 125
6 x 100 @ 1.50
5 x 100 @ 1.40
4 x 100 @ 1.30
3 x 50 easy

COOL DOWN
200 pull with paddles

=3600m!

IMG_20150415_074243hh.jpg (49.54 KiB) Viewed 17834 times

I wore my colourful trunks today, felt like I was in a colourful mood...however, I went for a run on Monday and I'm STILL struggling, I don't run (ever!) and I'm still suffering from the 5k run so I stuck to the back of my lane and let everyone else lead. Rest day tomorrow, back in on Friday where hopefully my muscles will have recovered.

Keep swimming guys, love to hear what people's sessions are like

[budgybloke]

Great idea for a thread Nate! I was in the ocean yesterday morning at dawn before work and our small group swam from North Bondi to Bronte Beach and back (difficult to judge, but it's maybe 3.5 - 4km?). Not nearly as intense as your sessions though - as it was all at a steady pace with no interval, apart from a bit of effort swimming across the rip and negotiating the shore break at Bronte) but really enjoyable. At around 24 degrees C, the ocean temp here is at its warmest for the year, so it's like a bath!

I was wearing my new Aussiebum aqua suit: http://www.aussiebum.com/swimwear/2629/loose-2.5-coogee

The other guys were wearing a mix of Budgy Smugglers, Aussiebums and some more traditional speedo endurance suits (which I can't stand as they flatten everything)!

[Bullseye]

As I was swimming today I realized that I had made a dumb mistake in my earlier post. I swim 40 laps (back and forth) in a 25 m pool, So it's 40X50, not 40X25. (Same as speedodemon) Glad to say I understated, rather than overstated. It's still well short of 3600, but at least it's 2k, not 1k. To answer your question, Nate, I do it all in one shot. I do four laps of freestyle and one lap of breast stroke, which I fondly refer to as "rest" stroke. The breast stroke gives me a bit of a breather and also helps me keep track of my laps, because it is so easy to lose track. I want to get a swimming watch that will keep track for me, I just can't justify spending that much money right now. Sometimes I will work in some kickboard work, usually I will exchange 10 regular laps for 10 laps of kicks.

budgy, wish I could swim with you in the ocean down under. Next time you come out to California we will have to hit the beach and do some swimming. Although If we were to swim up here in Northern CA, it would be just a wee bit colder than you are used to. Wouldn't have to worry about being flattened by a speedo in that cold water, more of a worry about how long to recover from the shrinkage

[Rolo336699]

Hey Nate... Great trunks in your pic... Love the jigsaw pattern... Be great to piece that together ... You suit them .. Even better if they had shorter side panels.

[Baltspeed]

Budgy, you're a lucky guy! Wish, I could swim with you in the warm ocean down under. The Baltic Sea is still cold and the warmest area is about 7 degrees C in the south at the german and polish coast. And in the high north it is still covered with ice. Until summer I go to indoor pools.

[budgybloke]

We'd welcome you here on our beaches any time. Ihre grünen Badeanzug ist sehr sexy!

[...:::sam:::...]

Without writing up all of my sets, I'm in the pools all of the time, today was:

8x50
3x200
2x500
1500.

Not on timings, its a build set for long course.

Just wearing my old school speedos.

[Bullseye]

That's an impressive set, sam, 3500. How often do you swim it? Looking good in the old school speedos. I like the blue and white.

[...:::sam:::...]

That's an impressive set, sam, 3500. How often do you swim it? Looking good in the old school speedos. I like the blue and white.

Thanks Bullseye. It just depends on what the goal events are and what the coach needs me to do in preparation. What I do varies with each swim but normally they are faster on timings to build strength and fitness where this set is more an endurance set to cope with fatigue at the back end after being setup by the earlier sets. In terms of outright length though, its normally somewhere between a 2500m and 5000m swim. The blue and white is good, I love the schools colours. They look a lot like something Aussiebum would make, but they are made by Speedo.

[pburks]

I did! Ever since I got back into school after spring break I've been able to keep a pretty good routine of swimming 5-6 times a week. I also just got a pebble watch and getting into better tracking my workouts. Anyone use pebble/ other swim watches with swim.com?

[Bullseye]

I did! Ever since I got back into school after spring break I've been able to keep a pretty good routine of swimming 5-6 times a week. I also just got a pebble watch and getting into better tracking my workouts. Anyone use pebble/ other swim watches with swim.com?

How do you like your watch? I am thinking about getting one and also am curious to hear about what others have purchased and their reviews.

[speedouk]

Great idea!

I'm now out of the pool and in the local Cotswold Waterpark Lakes - Only 14 degrees C so bit sharp still. Swam a lap which is around 800 metres which given the temperature was enough. Wore triathlon wetsuit and aussiebums in profile picture. Will be building to 2.5/3k with no rest or turns.

The wetsuit does restrict my stroke slightly and the shoulders do tire quicker - but barely need to kick as legs just float behind

[pburks]

I did! Ever since I got back into school after spring break I've been able to keep a pretty good routine of swimming 5-6 times a week. I also just got a pebble watch and getting into better tracking my workouts. Anyone use pebble/ other swim watches with swim.com?

How do you like your watch? I am thinking about getting one and also am curious to hear about what others have purchased and their reviews.

so far so good! ive only swam 2 workouts with it so far and once I figured out how to change the screen to display only the stats for the current set the only other feature I really want is at least a manual lap entry for when I'm doing kick board drills- where the automatic counter doesnt work.

other than swimming it has some nice, yet basic, smartwatch features that I'm still exploring. But I don't need a fancy watch that would just get me in trouble if I could do too much on it!

[speedodemon]

To answer your earlier question Nate, I don't stop after each 50. I usually stop only once after 26/28 but sometimes do the whole 40 without stopping. the first 12 are usually breaststroke, then it's freestyle. I'm too old (nearly 49) to push for speed, although I can accelerate for 50-100 reasonably well. So I've just built up stamina and fitness. I started at just 20 laps (lengths as we say in the UK) back in 2012 and gradually built it up. I usually stick to the medium lane, the fast lane boys are too quick for me, but I think my pace is reasonable - less than 50 mins to do 2000 metres (including 12 laps of breaststroke).

Very impressed with you guys doing short sets which build up into a big distance. I think for me going much beyond 2000 metres is pushing it these days, but you're inspiring me to think about pushing up to 2500!

[...:::sam:::...]

To answer your earlier question Nate, I don't stop after each 50. I usually stop only once after 26/28 but sometimes do the whole 40 without stopping. the first 12 are usually breaststroke, then it's freestyle. I'm too old (nearly 49) to push for speed, although I can accelerate for 50-100 reasonably well. So I've just built up stamina and fitness. I started at just 20 laps (lengths as we say in the UK) back in 2012 and gradually built it up. I usually stick to the medium lane, the fast lane boys are too quick for me, but I think my pace is reasonable - less than 50 mins to do 2000 metres (including 12 laps of breaststroke).

Very impressed with you guys doing short sets which build up into a big distance. I think for me going much beyond 2000 metres is pushing it these days, but you're inspiring me to think about pushing up to 2500!

The short sets are about building power, speed and fitness. Even distance swimmers spend most of their time doing training above their threshold in these 25/50/100/200 sets. Train fast to go fast, but you can also train long in a different sesion. If you can swim 2000m then you will be able to swim beyond that, it just wont be easy initially but you will adapt pretty quickly.

[Baltspeed]

After several weeks I've been today again to an indoor-pool. Since I was almost all alone there was nobody disturbing. So I could swim like a workout and I could make some laps, mostly breaststroke.

10 x 25 m, about 6 minutes
40 x 25 m, about 27 minutes
20 x 25 m, about 13 minutes

I know, this is not very fast, but I keep on working for a better physical state.
My bathing-suit was the black AB Classic 1,5.

[Texas_swimmer]

I need to start swimming at the gym, what would be a good swim for someone like me that is starting over. I have not swam in about a year so I know my endurance has gone to crap.