Change up Your Swim Pace
We can get pretty lazy when it comes to swimming. We show up to the pool, maybe after a struggle to find our stuff, get there, deal with traffic, deal with the pool schedule, deal with the other exercisers that you need to share the pool with …
And then some of us aren’t really paying attention when we swim. We don’t want to. We don’t like swimming. Swimming makes us feel slow, dumb, not good, inept.
So sometimes our mindfulness and effort aren’t in it all the way. We lose focus. We aren’t paying attention to our form. We aren’t giving it a good effort, or our best effort.
Here is a good workout to help with changing that up.
This workout helps build top-end speed and helps you improve your ability to change pace, which is a vital skill all triathlon swimmers need to learn.
✅ Staying in the game. Paying attention.
✅ Learning to work with your breath, have control of it
✅ Learning to pick up the effort without the heart rate and breathing becoming too labors. Calm and Strong. Not frantic.
🌟This workout helps build your race pace.
🌟This workout also helps you to control your breathing and effort.
🌟This workout will help you to learn to change up your pace, a vital skill needed for racing and dealing with the open water swimming.
On this workout, be mind full of the paddles. Reduce arm turnover and focus on good form. When using the pull buoy, this is your opportunity to focus on rotation.
Warm-Up: 200 your choice
Main Set: Changing it up-16 x 25 yards, every 4th fast-300 yards, steady swim-12 x 25 yards, every 3rd fast-300 yards, paddles-8 x 25 yards, every 2nd fast-300 yards, pull buoy-4 x 25 yards, all fast-300 yards, paddles and pull buoy
Cool-Down: 100 choice
What is a training block? 
We are talking about … sweating 5 pounds to look good at the dance. We are FREAKING talking about have NO NO NO NO clothes to wear. Seriously people. It’s one thing to not have NO CLOTHES and go to Walmart to get somewhat cute sweat shorts that leave pink fuzzies all over everywhere to fill in the gap. IT IS COMPLETELY ANOTHER THING to think about … and almost need to order new training gear. WE ARE TALKING … MOOOOOLA. And defeat. I came from pretty heavy anyway. I had to work my tail off to get to 150ish. Quite a feet for me. Didn’t come easy. I wasn’t one that could just eat and eat and not gain. I look at potatoes and gravy and my arse gets bigger. #nmf (and I love me some steak, mash potatoes and gravy.”
OH! I forgot to tell you that I decided to wear my NOLA swim cap. Flipping the bird that that episode of life. I was pretty confident that I could do it. I had warmed up. Felt good. e.t.c.
GET UP! IT IS TIME TO HUNT
So for me to be COMPLETELY CHILL in the water having this …. PROFOUND and GRACE FILLED moment is truly a miracle. During a time that I’m getting ready to roll into heart surgery. Letting someone put me under, control the fact that I’m alive or not and selectively burning my heart … to fix it.
The first exercise is what I refer to as the Jack Knife sit-up. Lay on your back. Hands and feet meet in the center. Slowly extend arms and legs away from center of body. Don’t touch floor with arms or feet. Hold and bring back to center. Do these for 1 minute. Try to do 25-30 reps. If you are a beginner, bend the knees and bring them up to midline and back down.
Leg extension with a workout bar is to use a bar and hold the bar in front of you and just lower the legs while keeping the hands and workout bar in place overhead at waist level. Drop legs 6” from floor, hold then bring back up to the bar. If you don’t have a bar, place hands under lower back and lower legs to floor, approximately 6” from the floor and back up to mid-line. Do each exercise for 1 minute/rest for 1 minute.
Now take the same bar and alternate it from side to side in order to work the oblique.
Another great abdominal exercise you can do if you don’t have a bar is to simply do the Classic Scissor Crunch. Lay on floor, hands on head not behind head, so you can avoid pulling the neck and alternate legs to elbow. Right elbow to left knee and reverse, count that as 1 rep. What I refer to as a double count. Do for 1 minute. 25-30 reps.
The next exercise is great for your whole core, The Classic Plank. When done with the scissor crunch, flip over on your mat, place hands under shoulders, lift lower body in straight line, flat back and hold for 1 minute.
The last one is the Classic Crunch. Lay down on your mat, knees bent, hands on head so you don’t pull the neck, lift ½ way and back down, repeat. Complete as many as you can in 1 minute.
Was reading a magazine. They say training for the long races changes you. In a big way. In so many positive ways, in different aspects of my life. You learn how to embrace all that you are, find a rhythm, find equilibrium and go. And keep going. Not so much just pushing and clawing your way through, but climbing up…because you still can climb, you still have more.
To ensure nice steady breathing, I took a pre-race jog which was very nice and calming. The swim was wetsuit legal. So in the suit I went. Also part of my calm breathing routine was consuming some goo that had caffeine in it. Got some glide on, mostly around the neck and to race start I went with Jeff and Scott. I felt pretty calm. It was a real change of pace to get into the really MUDDY water. Most were doing warm up stuff in the water. ME…I was peeing. Though I got to asking myself…my wetsuit is so tight, why in the world did I walk out here to pee. You figure it out. So…ready to swim, got myself situated where I wanted to be. Mostly in the back of the pack. My routine is to start slow, get my breathing under control and then try and pick up the pace. Things were going really well. I felt in command of the swim when the next heat caught up to me. No biggie until someone hit the back of my head fairly hard and made my calves cramp up instantly. 
That was hard to deal with. I had to stop, stretch out my leg, praying to the Saint of swimming that my calves wouldn’t stay cramped. It went away. I started swimming again. It happened again, the bang on the head/calf thing. So after that I started to elbow/kick the swimmer that would run into me over and over. (Honey badger coming alive). I did decide to swim wide. And amazingly enough, I was swimming straight. So I finished up the swim totally crazy happy and proud of myself.
HAHAHAHA. I wonder if that would have been a penalty or disqualify. Anyway…my nutrition was pretty good. Beans. Some perpetuem. Some cliff bars. Some chomps. And a bit of banana. I was missing ONE thing though. A big thing.
I wasn’t doing too bad until about mile 2 and started to feel really bad. I’d drink more. And feel even worse. I’d try to eat and I’d feel even worse. OH NO. I was thinking to myself. 13 miles of this will kill me. I wasn’t until I got to an aide station when a (very) concerned volunteer said…”you need to hydrate”. And I’m thinking to myself as I stumble to a walking pace, “dude I am”. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken ANY salt pills on the bike. AT ALL. Seriously, what a stupid (and harmful) mistake. More water was just making things worse. So I pop 4 pills right there. Well, actually it was one clump of mostly soggy pills from my fuel belt which thank goodness I didn’t choke on. After that…about 1/2 mile down the ride. All was right as rain. I found my rhythm and pace and the miles started to dwindle at a nice pace. I continued with the 4 salt pills at each aide station for awhile and I felt good. The songs that got stuck in my head. Black and Yellow. Wild Ones. Over and over and over for 13 miles. I tried repeatedly to get to Emimen ‘Till I Collapse but it was hot and my brain cells were dying off fast.
All this STUFF got stored in my body, my mind, my spirit ( my _____ ). Some of this stuff has been locked up for many longs years, now working its way to the surface and doggedly expressing the need for release.
The water was really ROUGH. 2 to 3 foot swells. IT WAS AWESOME. I started out, didn’t panic, worked to keep calm, felt fine, just couldn’t quite get the the rhythm of the freestyle. Without drinking a ton of water. I got pretty good at getting a nose full of water and snorting it out. So I did a lot of breast stroke. Found a rhythm. Found a way to ride the waves a bit. Stopped drinking so much water. In the back of my mind I was aware that I needed to get around the buoys faster. So I’d go back to the freestyle, where I managed to find this feeling of moving through the water better. Then I’d drink some more water. And move back to breast stroke. I was getting there, slowly. The chic I was keeping up with was pulling away. I was getting a little nervous. Then the guy in the kayak told me I had 12 minutes to get in. I had three more buoys left. I said “F$CK”, measured the distance, concluded that I wouldn’t make it. And said “F$CK” again. I start to sob a bit. WHAT??? CRYING IN THE LAKE???
At the point, I had resigned to not getting in on time. And I wanted to finish this $250 dollar swim strong. If this was the last of my race, i wanted to do it well. So I pressed on. Hard.
That was the only time someone passed me. For about 30 seconds.
Starting the 13 miles was hard. My legs felt ok. It was just plain HOT. And the run was so incredibly boring. The highlights of the run: Running with Glen for a bit. Seeing Dan a bunch. Seeing Ashlea’s rockstar @ss. Kelli on her last bit, getting myself an “another lap to go kiss”. The honey badger sign at the aide station. She recited the video to me, so that was cool. “He’s so NASTY…He doesn’t give a SHIT. He just takes what he wants!” The water hoses. And the seasoned triathlete that said this was a really hard race.
I passed a lot of runners. I tried not to walk. I walked more on loop one. Average pace was 12:20. Loop two got better. ALMOST DONE. Pace quickened to 11:00. Still feeling pretty good.
