Breakthrough - swim workout

Great breakthrough today, finally getting myself out of bed and into the pool around 5:00 AM. My middle son came with me today, and it was nice to share a lane with him and offer him some tips.


Image: http://dfw.triplethreattough.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/andypottsswimming_post.jpg

Today's big goal was to time my 500m and count my strokes. Here are the results:
100 - 55.60+57.34=1:52
200 - 59.96+1:04.27=2:03:93
300 - 1:05.58+1:03.27=2:08.85
400 - 1:06.29+1:02.77=2:09.06
500 - 1:02.45+1:05.75=2:08.20
43 strokes

As I work through the Friel program, I expect my swim fitness test to change a bit, but this is a good starting point. Extrapolating these results, I'm swimming a 9:40 500, which equates to a 35:25 1900. My goal is to beat 30:00 in the water, so over the next 5 months I need to drop my 500 time by 2 minutes to 7:50, which is basically a 20% speed improvement. Totally feasible if I combine form, fitness and strength training.

Really for me the biggest breakthrough was getting up and getting to the pool. I discovered there's a master's swim team that meets M-W-F at 6:00. I could swim from 5:00 to 6:00 on my own, do the master's program W-F, and address my need to improve my swim (which is my weakest leg, and probably my biggest opportunity to improve without risk of injury). 


Given that I have a 6:30 am weekly meeting on Mondays, my swim schedule is looking something like this:

• Monday: 1 hr high-intensity speed & strength
• Wednesday: 2 hr low-intensity endurance
• Friday: 2 hr medium-intensity muscular endurance

I have to vet this with Friel's training program, but his philosophy is to focus on improving weaknesses, with an emphasis on your biggest opportunity. Given my age as well as a chronic back issue I have to work around, swimming seems to be a better opportunity for significant improvement than running, so my goal will be to make big gains in the water.