A Faster 1.5km Swim in the Key of S- Part 3: Sustainable

I proudly present the third of my four part Massive SwimSplosion of Advice series. In Part 1 I covered swimming Smooth, and in Part 2 I talked about swimming Strong. In Part 3 I'm covering what I think is the second most important part, behind Smooth, of a good Olympic-distance or greater triathlon swim- Sustainable.

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Sustainable
Along with Smooth, swimming with Sustainability is the most important skill for a triathlete to have. It does a triathlete no good to get out in front of the pack, swim Strong to the first buoy, then completely come apart and struggle the rest of the way. The ability to Sustain a high intensity is paramount, behind only Smooth in importance. Truly, Sustainability and Smoothness are tied closely together. Having a pretty stroke for half the race and then watching your arms come off and float to the bottom of the ocean isn’t terribly useful.
As stated, a major part of Sustainable work will be focused on maintaining Smooth swimming. The other focus of Sustainable swimming is being fit enough to allow you to get out of the water after 1.5km and blast up the beach, through T1, and out onto your bike.
These will be longer sets, much like your LSD runs and rides. Maintaining a steady pace and heart rate is the goal, not cranking it to 11.
Be sure to warm-up before you go into your main sets with 200-500 yards nice and easy. This should shake the cobwebs out and get the blood into your muscles. You can also use active rest, 50-100yds easy, between these sets to ease the lactic acid build-up out.
Please note that under Set #2 there are many ideas for drill variation. Be creative with this. These are guidelines and ideas. They can be used on almost any of these sets. Many of the other sets also have variation possibilities.

Set #1
3 x 500- Sustainable pace/set rest
total- 1500yds
*Notes* Much like the 10 x 100 Strong set, this is an excellent benchmark set for Sustainable. While swimming these 500s you should be monitoring stroke deterioration, preventing yourself from dropping your hips, driving the stroke from your hips, letting your elbow fall below your hand, and cutting your finish short. Your goal should be to finish each 500 at about the same time. You don’t want to fade, you want to pace properly. This set is nearly 1.5km, and so is a good test set.

Set #2 (with Smooth variations)
5-10 x 200- Sustainable pace/ set rest
total- 1000-2000yds
*Notes* 200s are a great bread-and-butter set for 1.5km preparation. They are long enough that you build endurance, but not so long as to be intimidating. You can’t crank a 200 like it is a 100, but you don’t need to worry about swimming too hard and getting exhausted like a 500.
*Smooth Variations*
a) Mixing the 1, 2, 3, Swim drill into the 200 set is an excellent way to get both distance and technique worked at the same time. Suggest doing the first 100 1, 2, 3, Swim and the second 100 normal, while focusing on the grab.
b) Breathing drills are very helpful for Sustainability. A good breathing drill is 5, 7, 9. This is done by counting strokes and breathing on the 5th, then 7th, then 9th, then back to 5th stroke. It will hurt, but it will force you to Smooth your stroke out and make it more efficient. Efficient strokes use less oxygen. Breathing on odd numbered strokes also means that you will be bilaterally breathing, or breathing to both sides. Bilateral breathing is important because you don’t want to be breathing directly into a wave or another swimmer. Beginners should modify the 5, 7, 9 drill to 3, 5, 7. The goal is success, not failure. You will not get better through failure in these drills. You need to practice correctly. If getting all the way to 7 is too hard at the beginning only do a 3, 5 repeat. Do not Ego Swim.
Incorporate the 5, 7, 9 (3, 5, 7) drill into the 200s the same way you would incorporate the 1, 2, 3, Swim drill. As 100 drill/100 Swim.
c) Mix two drills into one 200. For example- 100- 5, 7, 9/100- Fingertip Drag.

Set #3 (with variation)
4/5 x 300/400- Sustainable pace/set rest
total- Varies
*Notes* Repeating heavier distances will be beneficial. Different distances and different numbers of reps allow for different intensities. The goal for all of these, like the goal in the 3 x 500 set, is for there to be very little fade between each swim. You want to be swimming hard enough to feel it, pushing it, but not so hard that things are going wrong.
*Smooth variation* Odd/Even- Easy/Hard swim. On the Odd numbered laps swim easy. On the Even numbered laps swim hard. So you are repeating 300s, but only swimming half of it hard. Mentally, this makes the set so much easier. Hard laps need to be done with a Strong intensity. A variation on this variation is to alternate by 50s rather than 25s. So Easy 50/Hard 50.

Set #4 (with variation)
Giant Ladder
1 x 100- sustainable pace/set rest
1 x 200
1 x 300
1 x 400
1 x 500
total- 1500yds
*Notes* Giant ladders are great. You need to be looking forward to that 500 at the end, so you need to pace the easier seeming 100 and 200 smart so you still have energy for the 500, but you don’t want to dog the early swim either. Nothing makes it harder to swim hard than to start out too easy. You get lazy and complacent. The most difficult part of the longer sets is staying within your body the whole time. It is very easy to drift and lose focus. When you drift your body begins to betray you and you lose intensity and Smoothness. Stay focused. Monitor what your hands, hips, core, head, elbows, shoulders are doing. Anything to be present.
*Higher difficulty variation* Climb back down the ladder. After the 500 do a 400, 300, 200, 100. Blast the 100.

Set #6
1 x 1650
total- 1650yds
*Notes* This should not be a regular set. It is a good test to do every once in a while. The key is staying within yourself and being sure to push the whole time. Focus on nothing but the lap count and fill your mind with positive self-talk. Don’t think, “Ugh, 40 more laps!” Break it into smaller chunks and think, “That was a good 200. Let’s do another one.”

*Triathlon-Specific Sustainability Notes*
The cliche, in case you haven’t heard it enough, is that you can not win a triathlon in the water, but you can lose one. Most triathletes, however, aren’t interested in winning. They want to finish, they have personal goals. For many triathletes the swim is that awful thing between the gun and the bike. Sustainability and Smoothness are how you go from hating the swim to tolerating or even loving it. It’s a chance to warm up, find your groove, and get your head right. Few things feel better than getting into T1 and seeing a ton of bikes.
But in order to be Sustainable you must work hard and, counter-intuitively, slow. Strokes fall to pieces when they are done too fast. Speed will come, but it takes a lot of work and even more patience.
You are looking for a lower stroke count (less strokes = more energy later remember?) in all of these sets. This will translate well into your open water swims. Long, Smooth strokes. The Sustainable sets are more important than the Strong sets.
Try and keep this simple tenant in your head when working on Sustainability:
A stroke that looks as good at the swim exit as it did at the start is a good stroke.
If you can do that, then your swim will be good, and it will get fast.

A Surprisingly Amount About Hips

Swim (Thursday)
1 x 200- warm-up
2 x 500
1 x ?- Stroke check

Ride (Sunday)
time- 3:38
distance- 53.05

First, don't ask me where Thursday's run went. I don't know either. Somewhere between school and the couch it completely disappeared. And there is a Saturday run. 
Thursday was a test swim. I found an article is this month's Inside Triathlon about a coach who slows his athletes down in the water and focuses nearly exclusively on stroke technique for huge amounts of training time. And these athletes, as you would expect if you've been following along here, get faster anyway. Swimming IS NOT ABOUT VOLUME. It's about smoothness and proper technique. To steal from The Fit Life, "more is not better. Better is better." And one of the drills this coach uses on his swimmers to isolate their hips is a kickboard drill. But not in the way you think. He has them tuck the board between their legs so half sticks up out of the water like a fin and half down into the water like a rudder. Then they swim and the submerged part of the board give immediate feedback and resistance straight into the hip/core area. Brilliant! I must steal use this.
And so I did. I first tried it on the Grey, but that didn't work well because I hadn't done it myself first. So he threw the board away and Thursday's ? set was my experimenting. I have no idea how many laps I did. I would do a 25 with one board one way. Stop, readjust, do another 25, and so on. There are two different types of boards at my pool and after I settled on the right one I needed to figure out seating. But once I figured it out it is really great. Swimming with the board like a rudder, not too deep but not so you've got a big waving tail, communicates directly into your core exactly what your stroke is doing. Its a workout, because there is oblique torsion happening, and its also a drill because you can feel how much of your stroke is being driven through your hips. Good stuff.
Today's ride was good, pretty much the same course Diesel and I normally ride. Felt a little slow up Pupukea, got rained on headed down Pupukea and all the way back to Haleiwa, but both directions of Dillingham felt strong and Pineapple went well. Saturday's trail run was pretty tough and my hips today, especially on the left, are sore. Doesn't impact the riding too much, until I swing my leg over the bike. Then it's all kinds of joy joy.

Invisible Hills

Swim Day
1 x 150- Warm-up
5 x 100- 1, 2, 3, Swim
5 x 100- 1:30 w/negative split focus
3 x 50- Sideline kick
4 x 200- 100- 5, 7, 9/100- stroke count
1 x 100- Cool down
total- 2200 yards

Ride Day
distance- 30.5mi
time- 1:43

Today's swim was brought to you by Old People. Old People: Getting in the Way of Your Workout Since Before You Were Born. The pool was crawling with them today. My fault. I normally swim at 5am, and today I went at 9 because I don't have school this week and I am not waking up that early if I don't have to. I should have checked the class schedule for the gym. I got there an hour before Aqua Aerobics started, and some class members were early to warm up. Or something. I don't know. They were mostly out of the way.
As for the actual swim, it went well. If you check out the workout, there wasn't a ton of intensity built in. Monday is more of a stroke-focused day. I'm trying to get some feeling back, some speed and body position. I've been thinking a lot recently about having my elbows high on the catch to use as much forearm as possible, and then I realized that I've been slacking on my finish. So there are spots at both ends of the stroke which need work. It's a never-ending tweakfest in the pool. Something always needs attention.
My ride today was time trialing down by Dillingham Airport on the North Shore. I've done this once before and it was a great speed workout. That time heading in there was a little headwind to push against, and coming out there was some tailwind giving me a push. Well today was slightly different. Today there was a ton of headwind slowing me down on the way in and a ton of tailwind helping rocket me back out. See the difference there? Did ya catch it? So I spent these laps doing five miles of, "Oof oof oof wind oof sucks rrrr so much groan," and trying to maintain something over 15mph. Then I'd hit my turn-around it it would be more of a, "I AM THE FASTEST CYCLIST IN THE HISTORY OF EVER!" kinf of thing. I capped 26mph flat out a few times today heading back out with the wind's help. Awesome.
But by the third lap I was pretty damn toasty and done for. The wind had kicked my ass and I was hurting for the whole five mile stretch, putting down sad times and pace averages. Its good for me, but until Cycle Dirtbag called wind the "invisible hill" I was planning on calling this post, "Five Survive, Five Drive" because that's what the ride today felt like. His is better. Still, it was a great speed-building workout and I feel it in my legs. I'll do it again next week. Looking to have a strong ride at the Anniversary Tri.

Yes, tikis are everywhere in Hawaii. Found this one just sitting on the side of the road. This is the god of, errr, cycling.

Finishing and Turn-Over

Swim Day
1 x 150- Warm-up
10 x 100- 1:30
1 x 500- 7:30 (7:45)
1 x 50- easy
5 x 200- build intensity by 50
1 x 1000- 15:30- Focus focus
5 x 100- Strong stroke, pretty stroke
total- 4200 yards

Run Day
Time- 35 min
Distance- 3.88mi

More longness going on in the pool today. I wanted to increase my ability to focus and be present, hence the 500 and 1000. I fell off the pace during the 500 a little, but I was tired from the 10 100s right before hand. The 1000 I thought I would miss by a lot and came in at 15:30. The goal for that set, as you can see, is a Focus focus. The final set, 5 100s, was mainly to stroke check. I'd been noticing that I wasn't finishing all the way past my hip and, therefor, was losing important power at the end of my stroke (called the "finish," for obvious reasons). So I spent three of those making sure everything was going where it ought too, even when tired. And then I decided to blow my doors off and attacked 100 number four. Pulled it in at 1:14. Not too shabby. My swim ego screams that it needs to be under 1:10 for me to even think about being happy with it, but the rational part of my brain knows I never swim like that and that's a pretty damn decent time.
The plan for the run was...there was no plan. Run hard. It's not a great plan, but it is one that will make me faster, stronger, and more able to suffer. So I went out and ran hard for 35 minutes. My cadence isn't where it ought to be, so I thought about getting that kick turning over quicker. Think it worked ok. My Runtastic stats say my pace was a 9:02/mi. But it looks like a constant pace. Guess that's better than a decreasing one. I didn't know how good of a run it was going to be at all when I set out. My hammys were killer tight. Never judge a workout by the first five minutes.
*Gross Side Note* You never fart once during a run. If you start farting, its going to come back to get you a few times. And it might make you giggle. After all, you're running away from it. Who cares? Hey look, a bus stop! Hehehe.

Mind the First Step

Bike Day (Thursday)
time- 53 minutes
distance- 19 miles

Swim (Friday)
1 x 150 -Warm-up
5 x 100- 1:30
5 x 100- 1, 2, 3, Swim
1 x 100- Cool down
total- 1250yds


Note to Self (and all Dirtbag Readers): Taking three or four weeks off means that those first few workouts are going to suuuuuck. Remember how 20 miles on the bike would be an unsatisfactorily short amount of time? Remember talking a big game about how you were going to drop your 100m workout pace to 1:25? You

The Beatings Will Continue!

should put those things on the back burner for a few weeks until your base comes back.
The ride Thursday hurt more than I expected it to. It was an easy, mostly downhill or flat ride that had my heart pounding at the end of every climb. I even set out with the express purpose of "an easy ride, just to get my legs back." And I still got to where I was going pretty worn out.
On top of that, I think I must have forgotten how humid it is here. Damn, I felt hot and sweaty by the time I was done. The hot/sweaty feeling may have been exacerbated by my new jersey, which I just had to wear as soon as I got back.

I have the same tattoo that shoulder

It looks cool, but I think the breathablilty of this particular jersey may be lower than what I'm used to. Or it was really humid and I'm going to have to wait until I re-adjust. One of the two. Oh, or I'm a big baby now. One of the three.
Anyway, the ride felt harder than it should have, but I wasn't too sore the next day. I'll be hitting the road for 35 miles today.
As for the swim, I know that looks like ridiculously short yardage, especially if you've been following this blog at all. Especially especially if you take in to account that a week from now I'm doing a 1.6 mile open water swim. What the hell am I doing knocking out a mere 1250 yards? Two things- Important Thing One) easing back in to it. There is no way to possibly truly prepare for that long of a swim in one week after a month off. Not going to happen. So my choices are to either burn myself up trying to prepare or focus on getting my feel back, hence the 1, 2, 3, swim drill, and treat next Saturday as a long workout instead of a race. Less Important Thing Two) We had tickets to go see Captain America

Go See This Movie.

yesterday and due to less-than-stellar timing on my part I didn't have as much time in the pool as I planned. So my swim got cut short. Still, it felt ok, if not terribly fast. I could not feel the water, which doesn't mean anything to you if you aren't a swimmer but means everything if you are. Swimming, unlike running or cycling, has to be pretty. A general rule is, if your stroke looks nice, then it probably is fast. A corollary to that is, swimming is much more form-dependent than running or cycling. You will see more fast ugly runners than you will see fast ugly swimmers. Running is more forgiving like that. Also, the range of "ugly form" in running is bigger and up for more of a debate. (So much so that I just went to the YouTubes looking for an amusing video of awful running form and couldn't find one because I feel bad making fun of someone's form now. Instead, imagine a guy in massively heavy shoes who looks like he's fighting an invisible demon which is only vulnerable to flailing arms and knees. Him, he ain't fast. But he's still faster than the swimmer with an equally ugly stroke.) But not being able to feel the water makes it harder to assess what my stroke looks like as I'm swimming. It also means my catch-pull-finish under the water is less effective because I'm not finding the proper place to anchor my hand or the most effective path for my stroke to take beneath me. The drill helped, and I'll be back in the water Monday to keep working on it.Today, as I said, will be a 35 mile ride. Weather looks nice. Should be a good time to get some. Probably ought to eat a little more first.