This week’s coached swim sessions for the local triathlon club: threshold work as usual on Tuesday and a slightly different endurance set for today’s small group.
Tuesday, 6th August 2013 – Varied Pace/Threshold Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 200m choice | ||
| 2x | 50m Front crawl catch-up on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl half catch-up on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 100m Front crawl building | ||
| 600m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 4x | 50m Front crawl – threshold/CSS pace on 10s rest | |
| 200m Front crawl pull – steady on 20s rest | ||
| 4x | 100m Front crawl – threshold/CSS pace on 15s rest | |
| 200m Front crawl pull – steady on 20s rest | ||
| 4x | 150m Front crawl – threshold/CSS pace on 20s rest | |
| 200m Front crawl pull – steady on 20s rest | ||
| 2,400m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 100m Choice – easy | ||
| 2,500m | ||
The one question everybody had this session – what’s half catch-up?
In the catch-up drill you wait for one arm to complete recovery and be at full extension before initiating the stroke with your other arm. Effectively your arms take turns at executing a stroke. Half catch-up is similar except you initiate the stroke as your recovering hand enters the water. It’s still late in the cycle, but not as late as with full catch-up. Basically it plays with stroke timing, requiring a little more thought on the part of the swimmer than full catch-up. In a pool of mixed ability swimmers though many find the timing of standard catch-up hard enough.
Thursday, 8th August 2013 – Endurance Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 400m Front crawl – easy | ||
| 6x | 50m Front crawl on 10s rest as 2x 50m Kick, 50m Stroke, 50m pull |
|
| 4x | 50m Front crawl – steady, last 15m hard on 10s rest | |
| 900m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 20x | 100m Front crawl on 5s rest as pull, pull, pull, stroke, stroke pull, pull, stroke, stroke, hard pull, stroke, stroke, hard, backstroke stroke, stroke, hard, hard, backstroke |
|
| 2,900m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 200m Choice – easy | ||
| 3,100m | ||
Thursday is always a smaller group, this week it was just one!
I decided to do something a bit different to usual today – a variety of hundreds to keep swimmers’ brains engaged and on short rest for an almost continuous swim. As a set I could easily monitor timing and give small snippets of feedback throughout; especially when there was only one swimmer in the pool.
