Of all three disciplines in triathlon, the one that comes the easiest for me is swimming.  I swam for 2 years in high school and that experience has really stuck with me.  I am by no means the fastest swimmer in my age group but I am usually in the top 10% for sure.  That has been very helpful when it comes to triathlon.  I don’t need to spend a lot of extra time in the water because I already have a pretty big advantage on most of the others in my age group.  Because of this I have not (in the past) tended to work that hard in the pool.

I am working with a coach to help me achieve my goals this year and of course that comes with swim training.  I worked with a friend before who helped me greatly when I was training for a 2.4 mile open water swim.  But other than that, I have managed my swimming on my own.  My coaching for swimming so far has included drills (belcht!) and shorter sets than I am used to.  I told myslef to give it some time and see how my swimming reacted to a different style of training.  Well, it is working!

This week  is an adaptation week so my volume has been scaled back and I get to do a couple of timed tests to see how I am doing. Yesterday I swam a 200 at 100% followed by an 800 at 90% with 30 seconds rest between the two.

See interval #4 and #5?  I am pretty sure I have never swam that fast before (I really can’t remember my high school times).  What we are doing is working!  I am excited to see how this translates over longer distances but an 800 at that pace has me very excited! You can see the two intervals below to see more detail.  I will add a link alter for the Garmin data (Garmin Connect is being crabby right now).