This week’s triathlon swim sets, coached for my tri club, cover open water skills and some simple endurance work. This is probably the last open water skills set for a while as the season is winding down, the Wednesday focus will be more on drills in the coming months.
Wednesday, 31st August 2016 – Triathlon Swim Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 300m Front crawl – sighting practice | ||
| 2x | 25m Front crawl – eyes closed! – on 10s rest | |
| 200m Front crawl – sighting every 7 strokes | ||
| 2x | 25m Front crawl – hard; no push off – on 10s | |
| 100m Front crawl – sighting every 5 strokes | ||
| 2x | 25m Front crawl – hard; no push off – on 10s | |
| 750m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 3-4x | 400m Front crawl – drafting; swap lead every 50m – on 40s rest 2x 25m Front crawl – hard; no push off – on 10s rest |
|
| 2,100m – 2,550m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 200m Choice | ||
| 2,300m – 2,750m | ||
The main footnote to this session is to be careful if trying swimming with your eyes closed in public lanes. It’s a lot easier to avoid clashes in a squad session. The aim is to see how far off course you go if you’re not watching. Everyone will deviate a little, some more than others; it highlights the point of regular sighting in open water.
Thursday, 1st September 2016 – Triathlon Swim Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 400m Front crawl – on 15s rest | ||
| 300m Front crawl – pull – on 15s rest | ||
| 200m Front crawl – on 15s rest | ||
| 100m Front crawl – hard | ||
| 1,000m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 2-4x | 300m Front crawl – pull – on 30s rest 3x 100m Front crawl – descending (easy, steady, hard) – on 15s rest |
|
| 2,200m – 3,400m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 200m Choice | ||
| 2,400m – 3,600m | ||
A simple session this week – no drills in the warm up and a main set that features a minimum of pace variation. Remember that a descending set means the time taken for each 100 descends, that is each 100 gets faster.
