Training: Don’t Surrender Too Much SL to SR

I swam 3968m starting at 14:45 today in the PC 32m outdoor pool. It was overcast, stormy, but at the moment of my swim, calm. The water was 20 C, and I put on my quickjohn wetsuit, wax ear plugs, and 2 silicon hats. I wasn’t going to bother with cold endurance today. I felt perfectly warm suited up as I was, in this temperature, as long as I kept swimming at effort.

I got chaffed in the armpits though- which is unusual in fresh water. I think the wetsuit squeezes around the shoulder enough to make the skin bulge out a tad more, and so I got chaffed. I’ll make a note to put some petroleum gel on next time.

I did 7x 512m (6 laps), then one 384 (4 laps) to top it off just past the Ironman distance.

My total time was 63:14. Minus clicking the TT and a little stopping 61:53. Converting to Ironman distance I would come in, wetsuited as I was, at 60:09.

I enjoyed having the wetsuit on today. It was enough insulation to keep my hands and feet from going numb, and the wax ear plugs kept the ear ache away.

But I had not swam for 4 days prior to this and I felt it. I needed more air than normal and I was just not strong on the catch and couldn’t hold my lower-drag position below 0.95 tempo so I backed off (not wanting to practice bad form) and held at 1.00. I noticed that I was not getting faster at the faster SR so it was better to go back to a bit slower SR and then work on lowering SPL to gain time.

It is my general conviction that SL must be held in priority over SR, and SR developed only as SL can be kept long with it.  So here I was, due to some fatigue, not able to hold a proportionally long enough SL so the higher SR actually resulted in no real gain in time, just more exertion.

This is an example of a good reason to keep track of your splits and always count SPL. Even if I were not fatigued like this, I would take note at which tempo my times quit dropping or my SPL started going up too much, and that would tell me where I need to do more Hold-SR and improve SL conditioning work.

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