Monday "group" swim workout 5/19/08

Good Monday to everyone. Hopefully you all had a fun and active weekend. I'm pretty tired and a somewhat sore from riding hard in the Santa Fe Century. It was a nice day, though, and I feel really good from the effort. I just needed to take some time off of too much running, apparently.

Anyway, I will not be able to "lead" the group swim workout tonight, but hopefully, you all will go and get the sessions started. I'll be there every week that I can from now on.

Here's a suggested workout for this evening's session (I'll do this at noon):

• warm-up 300 to 500 yds: 1x200 easy crawl, mix strokes 1x50 breast, 1x50 back, 1x50 kick (do this twice to make 300 total)
• 200 yds drill: 1x50 swim one arm (25 yds left, 25 yds right); 1x50 swim w/fists; 1x50 pull-buoy emphasizing rotation and lengthening stroke (almost match hands); 1x50 rotated side-kick (extend arm forward, rotate 90*, kick in freestyle rhythm, then stroke and rotate naturally to other side -- it's about 3 or 6 kicks per side, depending on how you kick in freestyle...look this up if you don't understand it).
• main set (1,200): pacing pyramid. Find your 400 yard pace by building up to it: 1x50 (send-off at 1:00 if possible), 1x100 (send at 2:00 if possible), 1x200 (send at 3:30 if possible), 1x400 (send at the next full minute rotation [i.e. send at 7:00 if you swam a 5:30 etc.]), then pyramid back down using the same send-off intervals
• 50 yds easy kick: catch your breath and prepare for 400 yds time trial
• 400 yds "time trial": swim a timed 400 yds set & keep your time for records
• 100 yds cool down

Total = 2,300 to 2,500 yds

Work hard and good luck!