Swim Project - Week 4 Update

My initial objective of this swim-focus was to hire a coach to work with and confirm I could swim with proper technique. I didn’t want to blindly go for volume without making some changes first, or at least have some confirmation that it was OK. I hired Brian Heise and so far, we are making good progress.

His initial assessment was that I was swimming in a very “shoulder-driven” manner, which in-and-of-itself is not necessarily bad, particularly for an open-water event. However, he suggested to make long-lasting improvements, I needed to learn how to swim more from my hips and get the connection between hips and shoulders. We approached this by focusing on kicking – speeding up my kick and slowing down my upper body. He also said a stronger kick would help me develop a better catch and more feel for the water at the front of my stroke. The kicking was certainly a new idea for me in the pool --- I did one year of swim team when I was a kid and none of that included any technique assessment or kicking. At that time, we pretty much just went back and forth across the pool any way we could.

In starting with Brian, we focused on basics – kicking on your side in a stream-lined position, side-kick- and six-kick-switching (with finger-tip drag), etc. This evolved into catch-up, sometimes with a kickboard and sometimes without, and then six-kick-switching with tennis balls/fists and “finger drag.” All the kicking definitely high-lighted the fact that I had not done much of it before and was not metabolically efficient at all… I was gassed after just 25 or 50 yards of kicking on my side! However, I continue to plug away and work on developing a stronger, more efficient kick. When we tried catch-up with a kickboard, however, is where things started clicking. I was making it across the pool doing catch-up with a kickboard faster than I could regular “swimming” before. It also felt different and the water seemed to be “thicker” during my pull and I started feeling a nice rhythm with my hips/core helping me move through the water. I also did a fair amount of side-kick switching (with tennis balls or fists), which helped me get a feel for the timing even more, in addition to forcing me to catch/pull more with my forearms. We would do it with tennis balls and then without immediately after to see what the feel was like (you have a lot more sensation on your fingers).

Once we got the kicking going, the next thing we progressed to was working more specifically on the catch. We reviewed several of the various sculls and figured out together that some front-sculling with one-arm-drills helped start to alleviate some left-arm weirdness I have in my stroke. It will still be a work-in-progress and hard to get rid of old, highly-engrained motor patterns, but it has definitely made a difference and I will continue to work on it to develop new motor patterns.

Thus far, through 4 weeks, I’ve been in the pool 21 times and covered 25,000 yards with about 16,000 of that being some form of kicking or focused drill. Not a lot of volume yet, but good frequency given my limited time. From a benchmark standpoint, I have two to review: golf and the broken mile.

Golf	With fins	No fins	No fins total
6/20/2011	16 – 17 – 35	19 – 21 – 43	83
7/21/2011	14 - 16 - 37	18 - 18 - 42	78
10/7/2011	N/A	18 - 19 - 44	81
12/1/2011	12 - 13 - 37	15 - 15 - 40	70
12/2/2011	N/A	12 - 13 - 39	64

Broken Mile	Time	Rest in-between	Comments
6/20/2011	0:29:52	0:00:10	Right before CDA '11
12/21/2011	0:24:58	0:00:10	Benchmark with fins

The most glaring thing is I went from the upper 70s and low 80s in golf to a best of 64!! And that was after 1 week! A big chunk of that improvement came from just lengthening out my stroke, but it also made me faster. My distance-per-stroke made a huge improvement. Now I need to continue exploring the continuum of DPS / stroke rate to see what works and how it feels. I can’t swim catch-up style all the time, mainly for 2 reasons: (1) I’d be completely worn out (I’m not efficient at it yet) and (2) it’s not practical for open-water triathlon swimming. But being able to do this is huge because now it provides me the awareness I need and understanding of how it feels and I can at least start exploring it.

With respect to the broken mile, it’s not really a fair comparison because I had fins on for the most recent attempt. We are using it for my “first” benchmark and now the objective is to get to that time without fins! Nonetheless, it’s still interesting to compare. I good almost 5 minutes off a broken mile I did in June. Once I am better able to sustain the “new” technique, it will be interesting to see how much I can cut off without fins.

Good progress and it keeps me excited to keep working at it!

2012 Swim Project

My most recent Ironman swim was a 1:17. Granted, I did not have much of a swim focus, but not only have I not improved this year, I have actually regressed when it comes to AG placement out of the water. In my first IM, I was at 72% in my AG and had made it up to 30% 2 years later in Louisville (and that was with a swim where I had major leg cramps). However, now I’m back down to 64% in my AG as of Florida 2011. Ouch. The swim is a relatively short portion of the day, but it still has an impact on race performance for several reasons:

1. Coming out of the water quicker allows easier transitions. This year in Florida, the change tent was crammed and it took me 7+ minutes to get out on my bike. So getting through the swim quicker will make this easier and save double time – the time savings from the swim and the resulting time savings from an easier transition.
2. It gets me further along in the 140.6 miles in a shorter time, leaving me more capacity for the run. Even if this is only a few minutes, it can have a large positive impact on my run. Feeling better later and later into the run makes it easier to dig deeper.
3. If you are a good swimmer, the 2.4 takes less out of you physically, resulting in the same effect as #2 above.

All of these things will have a positive impact on race day performance, which is ultimately everyone’s objective, right?

There are those that suggest investing large amounts of time in swimming over the winter does not yield a good return on investment in that you need to invest a lot of time to yield just a few minutes improvement in swim time. For a busy age-grouper, they would say this is not a good use of time in the winter. I agree with this in principle and practiced this last winter, focusing on running and hitting some early season running races for fun. I had a good time and it kept me motivated. And I would argue the ROI equation for most AG’ers probably points to a more bike and run fitness approach in the off season.

However, I am also a big believer in working on your weaknesses and probably the biggest thing I need to improve to continue making advances up the AG results curve is my swimming. I have always been a pretty “strong” swimmer in that I can swim fine and am very comfortable in water. However, I am not a FAST swimmer. I am egregiously slow compared to others in my AG. Surely I have the aerobic capacity to go faster than 1:17 over 2.4 miles.

So, to continuously work on my weaknesses, I have decided to take some action! I am creating “Swim Project: 2012” and doing a little experiment.

My Objective – Make a focused effort for 5 months to improve swim technique and fitness and get back to 30% AG or better in competitive races.

How I will measure improvement – Benchmarks in the pool and race times in Open Water at Oceanside (half) and St. George (full). I will choose some from the following list:

• 3x300 TT (30 sec rest)
• Broken mile with 10 sec rest (with fins initially)
• Swim Golf
• All out 50, 100, 200
• Average Pace / 100 in straight 30 Minute Pool Swim
• Half IM swim time – PR = 36:04 – Auburn Long Course 2009 or 32:11* (20% AG) Vineman 70.3 2009 (* I consider this a bit of an aberration – it’s an easier swim)
• IM swim time – PR = 1:14:23 – IM CDA 2010
• IM swim percentage – 30% AG and 29% OA – IM Louisville 2009

My approach – I am attacking this problem in several different ways, primarily with a technique focus, but hopefully improving fitness while improving said technique:

1. Hire a swim coach for a weekly session on technique – I have had a tri coach for a couple of years now, but have decided to hire a swim coach instead of a general tri coach. I will be writing my own plans and handling the bike and run myself and working with a swim coach in-person to focus on swim technique. For additional, supplementary technique focus while not working with the coach, I may consider adding the Finding Freestyle program to my agenda, but will consult with the swim coach first.
2. Swim frequency – my intent is to swim as many sessions a week as I can reasonably accomplish while maintaining bike and run fitness and within the constraints of my life (i.e. spending time with my family, going to work, making sure my wife has time to train, etc.) My weekly goal will be 5 times a week as a minimum with 6-7 as a stretch goal. A session will be defined as 30 minutes minimum. Since I am going to focus on technique and quality, I am not going to outline any distance goals. However, having said that, I expect to ramp up the volume as the months progress and will be tracking as best I can, both time working on technique and distance.
3. Accountability – since I won’t be working with a tri coach, I will use my blog to track progress and document my experience.
4. Swim volume – I won’t be focusing so much on volume initially, at least not in distance covered in the pool, but perhaps in time spent and number of sessions. I am not going to just do mindless volume since my goal is to “imprint” some new technique and not just slog through long yardage with my “bad” form. We will monitor this as we go.

So here's to some new swim adventures in the "off" season and the 2012 race season!

The Ironman Journey - a checkpoint

I have heard and read that it takes about 5 years to build the capacity and learn to compete in an Ironman. This definition of competing probably has different meanings for everyone in that some people are just naturally gifted and have the athletic background to perform well at Ironman from the get go. So this period of adjustment may just mean it takes 5 years of solid training just to compete and then you can train to “win,” whatever your definition of winning is, be it turning pro, qualifying for Kona, or whatever. I now have data from several Ironman races over the past few seasons, so I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the progress and see what my n=1 anec dotal experience may lend to this 5-year idea. First, a look at the basic numbers…

		Wisconsin	Louisville	CDA	Wisconsin	CDA	FLA
	Date	Sep-07	Aug-09	Jun-10	Sep-10	Jun-11	Nov-11
	Finishers	2206	2352	2096	2398	2187	2439
	AG Finishers	266	360	327	352	271	362
Swim	Time	1:22:06	1:17:01	1:14:23	1:16:21	1:17:35	1:17:48
	OA	1392	681	733	918	875	1319
	OA %	63%	29%	35%	38%	40%	54%
	Div	191	107	122	138	116	231
	Div %	72%	30%	37%	39%	43%	64%
	T1	10:47	4:36	5:48	7:35	5:32	7:51
Bike	Time	6:44:32	5:44:47	5:55:46	5:41:03	5:33:27	5:19:26
	OA	1336	459	638	309	254	219
	OA %	61%	20%	30%	13%	12%	9%
	Div	192	91	110	59	43	54
	Div %	72%	25%	34%	17%	16%	15%
	T2	6:35	4:52	1:58	4:12	2:14	4:19
Run	Time	4:07:51	4:04:48	DNF	4:00:52	4:11:57	3:44:20
	OA	457	482		278	454	182
	OA %	21%	20%		12%	21%	7%
	Div	66	87		46	78	35
	Div %	25%	24%		13%	29%	10%
OA	Time	12:31:50	11:16:04	DNF	11:10:01	11:10:45	10:33:41
	OA	868	397		260	319	207
	OA %	39%	17%		11%	15%	8%
	Div	129	77		42	53	45
	Div %	48%	21%		12%	20%	12%

Each of these races has a story, but you can see the overall trend. A first experience at Wisconsin where I was happy to finish, then a year off from Ironman, then a more consistent effort to move up the age group, with, what I would suggest is perhaps slow progress, but progress nonetheless (my progress at half-IM was much quicker). Based on this high-level assessment, I am confident I have not neared my potential in an Ironman. However, I would say that I’ve done the best I could in each race, given that I am an average age-grouper with a family and a career.

More specifically, the swim trend is alarming in that I seem to be moving backwards. This off-season, I am hoping to do something more specific to address that, but we will see if it works out (time, budget, etc). The bike continues to improve, although it seems I have taken the large chunks out already and my placement in my AG may continue to rise slowly. With respect to the run, it is mixed, but in Florida this year, I did make the top 10% in my AG for a run split. However, in a reasonably competitive half-IM, my run splits are usually much higher than that, i.e. top 5 or 10 AG.

To get some more perspective, let’s look a little deeper at the numbers. Here are some plots of bike power, by each hour, in the races where I’ve had power available.

The most noticeable trend is that I faded in each of the previous 4 races. However, in FLA’11, I started very conservative and managed to sustain that effort. It is obviously a flat course so you can control your effort more and you are not forced to get over any hills, but it seems like I paced the ride pretty well in FLA and now need to keep working on raising the power up.

Based on my FTP, however, the power I rode in FLA still seems very conservative -- my IF in FLA was only 0.58 and TSS was only 178. That’s really low for an Ironman and I know I could have easily ridden harder. The question is what effect would that have had on my run. In previous IMs, I have ridden with IFs of 0.59 to 0.68. My Florida ride was on the low side and not surprisingly, I had my best run to date.

With respect to the run, I have faded in each of these races. Here are some plots of run pace pre 5K segment and cumulative pace per 5K segment. In Florida this year, I was able to hold off the fade longer and run quicker leading up to it -- I was still managing my approximate target pace through 18+ miles and have not made it that far before.

The one above is average pace in each 5K segment. The one below is the cumulative average pace as I made it through each 5K segment.

In previous races, starting the run, I have been at 7+ hours into the race. I was through 20 miles of the run quicker than I had been before. See the table below.

Race	Through T2	Through 20 miles of run	Last 10K
CDA ‘10	7:17	10:10 (DNF at 17.8)	N/A
Wisconsin ‘10	7:09	10:10	0:59:42
CDA ‘11	6:58	10:12	0:58:54
Florida ‘11	6:49	9:33	1:01:00

I still struggled through that last 10K, but I was to the start of it much earlier than before. After 3 seasons, it seems my capacity is good for about 9-9.5 hours and I really struggle past that. My belief is that it is mostly peripheral fatigue and my legs give out first. I just can’t seem to keep the HR up at that point. In the graph below, you can clearly see this effect as I ran about 20-25% of the marathon in Florida at a HR of 135 or below. The first ¾ of the marathon, I was tracking my HR to a goal of ~145-150. Once I got through 2.5 hours of running, I had a hard time stimulating my cardiovascular system and my legs were shot!

From a time standpoint, I was through the swim and bike and onto the run in 6:49. It took me another 2:43 to get through 20 miles of the run. That’s 9 hours and 32 minutes of work, but that only got me through 134.4 miles. So, to improve upon this, I can lengthen the time at which I can sustain this work rate or raise the rate at which I can work for 9.5 hours. I need to work on both of these!

My bike ride in Florida was very controlled and I rode at 20-25 watts lower than my original target. My norm power was 183 for a TSS of 178 (at least according to my FTP estimate of 315). That is very low for an IM ride. My original target was even conservative at an IF of 0.65, but as the ride unfolded, I decided to dial it back, keep my HR down intentionally, and lower my target power by ~20 watts. Even if my FTP estimate is high, which it likely is after going through some long, hard IM training, that TSS is still very low. I have done hilly half-IM rides of more TSS than that and have run really well off the bike -- a 1:31 run split in Auburn this year and a 1:33 at Wildflower 2010. I have also run a 1:28 off the bike in Kansas at the 70.3 there. But Ironman seems to be another story for me. The swim and bike still take too much out of me and I have a really tough time utilizing my running fitness. It should be my strength, but I still fade significantly.

AG placement is probably the thing I am most interested in improving and I was somewhat stagnant this year. In a competitive half-IM, I seem to be in the 10-20 range - 12^th AG at Vineman 70.3 (2009), 19^th at Wildflower (2010), 15^th at Boulder 70.3 (2010) and 16^th at Kansas 70.3 (2011 – also stopped to help my wife fix her flat tire). However, in an IM, I am only in the 40s AG with a 42 last year at Wisconsin and a 45 this year in Florida. I am somewhat disappointed with that, but I did hit some other milestones this time around – I ran the Florida marathon faster than I ran my first open marathon in 1999, which was a 3:48. It has taken awhile, but I am there. My next target will be 3:24, which I ran in the Chicago marathon in 2003. I am confident I can get there with consistent hard work. This is my 5^th finish and really only the 3^rd season of racing IM. I did my first in 2007, but I didn’t have any expectations and just wanted to finish. I took 2008 “off” from IM as my son was born that year, but then did Louisville in 2009 and have raced IM in 2010 and 2011. So I’m through 3 of the hypothesized “5 years” and still making progress (I think).

How do you work on this capacity, durability, and muscular endurance? Probably more of the same of what I’ve been doing the last few years. Consistent “2-a-days” with hard work on the swim, bike, and run. However, this off-season, I am thinking of a slightly different approach. I can’t do the same thing and expect different results, right!? I have done bigger weeks of swim volume before (big for me, anyway, given my time constraints) in the “off” season after 2009. I started making some improvements, but they seemed to disappear. This time around, I am considering some 1-on-1 swim coaching for several months. I am hoping I can make that work, because I think the combination of a coached, technique focus with increased volume can help. If I can cut just 5 or 10 more minutes off my swim, that will put me to that hard part of the race fresher and earlier and in a better position to maintain my work rate longer. My other approach is going to be continuing to work on bike strength with hard interval sets and muscular endurance rides. With respect to running, I’ll just be maintaining for a few months, but perhaps working in some speed for an early season 2012 half-marathon. Not sure on that one yet. Regardless, it is the process and the training I love and keeps me coming back for more.