Another attempt at my current set:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 51s, rest interval 24s
200m front crawl swim down
And once again I managed the entire set with all the reps under 50s. Very pleased with this. It seems like real progress.
USRPT distance this year: 51,150m
Total distance this year: 116,100m
Back to tumble turn practice for this session.
USRPT distance this year: 49,900m
Total distance this year: 114,250m
So, first attempt at this new set. Target time down by one second, rest time up by one:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 51s, rest interval 24s
200m front crawl swim down
Pleasingly I continued completing the 50s in under 50 seconds and it all went, err, swimmingly. Let’s hope I can keep it up.
USRPT distance this year: 49,900m
Total distance this year: 112,950m
More tumble turns today. Not much to add there…
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 111,100m
Another tumble turn practice session. As I keep working on these they’re starting to become easier, but there’s no way yet that I’d consider them a “natural” part of my swimming.
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 109,800m
Back to the pool for a third attempt at my current session:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 52s, rest interval 23s
200m front crawl swim down
Bit of an unexpected day, this. My first 50 was 47s. The first half dozen were all 47s or 48s and even after the first fifteen reps I’d not dropped out of the 49s. By the time I’d done a few more I was becoming slightly concerned that I was going to blow up in the last few and drop below the target time, but even when I tried to slow down I was still banging in sub-50s reps. The last two were just a case of hanging in there, but even so I still came in sub-50 on both.
So, another 25 reps completed and the target time drops again, but the most amazing thing was being sub-50s for every single rep. I genuinely didn’t believe I could do that at the moment. Soon I shall have to though 🙂 It does mean that whilst I’ll now be looking at a target time of 51s, I have in fact gone from reps of 60s on 1:25 at the start of February (which I couldn’t actually complete at first) to sub 50s on 1:15 in five months, though actually I’ve probably missed over six weeks of that period for one reason or another (weather/illness/injury/work mostly). I’m quite pleased with that.
USRPT distance this year: 48,650m
Total distance this year: 108,500m
A little progress so far this week. On Monday evening I finished wrapping the timbers in DPC, then cut most of the joists to length. My intention is to have them at 400mm spacing, but quite how they’re arranged depends on whether I can get them all in positions where they’ll go around the piers.
On Wednesday evening I put the lower blocks for the piers in place and started laying out the joists. I think I have an arrangement that allows me to move one timber 20mm from its ideal position and means I don’t have to cut any to work around the piers. By the time I finished about half the joists the Sun had set and it was getting quite dark.
The outer rails for the floor on the left hand side in the above picture appear to be increasingly bowed, perhaps because of the hot weather. I shall pull the sides together with some ratchet straps once all the joists are in place (easier to put them in place where there’s a larger gap than to make the gap smaller and then try to fit them). Once everything is nailed/screwed together it should stay square.
More tumble turn practice today. Another very quiet day, too. A school was using half the pool when I arrived, but after they’d left I don’t think there were more than two other people in the water for the next forty minutes.
I spent some time trying to get my hands back into a streamline position faster as I come out of the turn (or even go into the turn) and that appears to be working, but requires more practice.
USRPT distance this year: 47,400m
Total distance this year: 106,650m
Back to my latest USRPT set today:
400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 52s, rest interval 23s
200m front crawl swim down
Got off to a bit of a sluggish start and had one rep over 51s (but only just) in the first half dozen. Things actually got a bit better after that and whilst I did have another excursion into the low 51s, many of my reps were actually coming in at less than 50s and again I completed the entire set. I think that’s a definite improvement on the last time.
USRPT distance this year: 47,400m
Total distance this year: 105,150m
Another technique day. Seriously good job it was, too, as the pool was far busier than usual. I’d never have been able to do my usual USRPT set. Bearing in mind that I was still swimming 50s and not dawdling (in fact I was probably the fastest person in the pool at that time by some margin) and even had a drink bottle on the side of the pool at the shallow end, someone even got in and started swimming up the lane line I was using. Needless to say there was a collision. He then moved around the pool a bit, but towards the end of the session started swimming diagonally across two lane lines (including the one I was using)! I discovered this when he swam over me as I surfaced from my start. I did at one point wonder if he was trying to “bully” me into moving elsewhere.
He got out of the pool whilst I was still changing and commented that they should have put lanes in. It was tempting to suggest that if he couldn’t swim straight then the most likely outcome of having lanes in would be that he’d strangle himself.
USRPT distance this year: 46,150m
Total distance this year: 103,300m
