2016 Training - The Zen of Swimming

 

In 2015 I was so diligent about swim training. 

So diligent, and yet my whole swim experience was of near-drowning, oxygen-deprived agony.  

I would desperately struggle to stay with my teammate for 100-meters, gasping and sputtering the whole way.   

And before I could recover, we would do another 100-meters.   And then another, and another... 

I lived in constant dread at the prospect of the next horrific, nightmarish swim session.

My whole life deteriorated into a miserable, joyless slog -- I would go to bed dreading the thought of having to do a swim workout the next day, suffer through nightmares about swimming, and awaken to a wave of fear and dread at the prospect of that day’s workout. 

And I didn't improve.  

In fact my swimming got slower.  My time of 43 minutes for the triathlon swim in Korea was far longer than the  38 minutes it took me to cover 1.9-kilometers at Frankfurt and the 36 minutes it took me in Taiwan. 



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So this year I just do 20-minute relaxed sessions at my Spa

I use a big, buoyant pull buoy.  I focus on a few simple mechanics — chest down, stomach in, hips up.  Follow-through.

I don't worry about the clock or competitive concerns. Rather I simply try to stay in that present moment.  

Much of my focus is on breathing.  Bilateral breathing —  stroke, stroke, breath left, stroke, stoke, breath right.  

During these swims I start to realize a state of blissful placid calm.  I find that I am even achieving some of the meditative serenity and mindfulness that has always eluded me in yoga 

I am at one with the water surrounding me.  I am the water. The water is me.  There is no separation.  (Okay, I am starting to exaggerate, but only just a bit.) 

Anyway, I am not certain that there exists any relationship between these swim sessions and the tumultuous swim legs of my upcoming triathlons. We will see. But no matter -  my 2016 training is much more consistent with my training philosophy  

Spring 2016: Short, frequent workouts vs. fewer, longer sessions

Here is a snapshot of my early triathlon season training from Strava: 

Notice all these little tiny bubbles - each bubble represents one of my numerous, very short workouts.  On many days I do 3 workouts:   A quick 30-minutes run perhaps.  A brief 20-minutes swim. A fast 15 minutes on my bike trainer.  And these aren’t warm-ups or cool-downs - each bubble represents the whole session.  (The number of minutes on the bubbles is the combined total workout time for the day). 

Evidence suggests that short, frequent workouts are better for improving efficiency/economy (versus fewer, longer workouts).  The triathlon training program I loosely follow  is very insistent about avoiding "inappropriate training volume --which is primarily referring to the tendency of weekend triathletes to exhaust themselves doing "epic workouts".  A well-known run training rule is to try not do more than 25% of your weekly mileage in one session.  

So I assume these arguments in favor of frequent workouts for enhancing race performance are somewhat accurate and certainly I hope to improve my race times. But actually the main reason for this program is that I have simply felt like doing shorter workouts. I am really just lazy. It seems easier for me now to do short sessions.   

• Especially easier when they are pleasant swims in the tiny pool at the luxury spa in my apartment building.  
• Or a quick 15-minute trainer ride first thing in the morning before shower and breakfast.  
• Or short runs around MidTown park, or on treadmill.  

I have managed to arrange my schedule around these short, intense sessions, though it is occasionally inefficient time management, and I would acknowledge I may be compromising some training quality. 

Of course most of us weekend athletes cannot maintain such a schedule (that’s why we are called weekend athletes, right?)  

And even for me this training regime won’t last long, as the season progresses I anticipate shifting into longer, more race-specific sessions. 

2016 Fuji-Susono 10k

I return to Fuji-Susono after a six year absence, this time running the 10k race rather than the half-marathon.  









Before the race, as always, our team stays at the nearby Gotemba Resort. 




My teammates drink themselves into oblivion that evening, 





enjoy enormous, lavish buffet breakfasts hours before the run, 





and lounge in the warm spring sunshine right up until race-time. 




Meanwhile I am trying to bring a modicum of seriousness to the event since it is one of my only races of the season.  





The infamous long climb from the 1-kilometer to 5-kilometer is far more dramatic when only doing 10k.   In stark contrast to most any other race, the most brutal moments of the event for me are very early on, particularly around 3k...  (elevation profile below looks like a pointy mountain peak) 

....I hit the turnaround in 22 minutes, do the U-turn and then push downhill to finish under 39 minutes. 

....sprinting madly the last 800 meters, paranoid that an age group competitor is looming right behind me  (turns out the guy I saw is a decade younger)








I suppose it was worth the painful effort - look at all the prizes and glory showered on me for my age-group victory: