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More DIY pace clock ideas for USRPT sets

Posted on January 31, 2018 by james

I was thinking about using my DIY pace clock for USRPT sets this evening and an enhancement occurred to me. It should be possible to add a set of LEDs or something similar to the face of the clock that light up at the “set off” times. Not sure how many swimmers I might have in a lane at a time, but perhaps it would even be possible to have different colour LEDs for different swimmers and to have them flash for a few seconds before lighting up. After the target time the LEDs would switch off, so the swimmers have to try to complete the distance before “their” LED goes out. I reckon that could all be done using an Arduino. I’d just need some method to set the target and turnaround time, but that should be possible with some switches. Oh, and a “start” button, too. Haven’t worked out how to make it work for two clocks at each end of the pool for 25m or 75m sets yet, but it surely can’t be that difficult.

Posted in Swimming | Tagged coaching, USRPT | 2 Comments

Plans for a DIY pace clock

Posted on January 31, 2018 by james

The pool I coach at (run by the ironically-branded “Better”) has two place clocks. One has not worked since August 2017 and I initially reported the problem at the start of September 2017. It’s awkward with just one because it isn’t visible from everywhere in the pool, nor to those swimmers whose eyesight either never has been, or is no longer, quite what it could be. Much whining and whinging later, Better finally told me in the first week of this month that a new pace clock had been ordered. It’s now the last day of the month and there’s still no sign of it 🙁

When I do USRPT sessions with my swimmers I time them myself to work around this problem of not having a usable pace clock, but it’s hardly a good solution, not least because it means we can’t do 25m sets, so I’ve been thinking about what else I can do. As an experiment this week I’ve ordered a couple of kitchen-type wall clocks with sweep second hands from my least unfavourite online auction site. They use the radio signal to set the time automagically, so I’m hoping they should stay nicely synchronised with each other.

My plan is to open the clocks up, remove the hour and minute hands (and make the second hand more obvious, if necessary) and replace the hour numbers on the face with numbers of seconds, then to mount the entire thing on a stand so it can be put at the end of the lane for the swimmers to use for tracking their target and turnaround times. More details once they’ve arrived.

Posted in Projects, Swimming | Tagged coaching, training, USRPT | Leave a comment

Swimming, 31st January 2018

Posted on January 31, 2018 by james

A repeat of yesterday’s USRPT set today, though only 400m for the warm-up as I was getting a little tight on time otherwise:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 60s, rest interval 25s
200m front crawl swim down

Today I managed the entire set without failing. Actually I was hitting around 50s for the 50m swims which makes the rest interval a little long, but I think I need to work my way back down to the shorter rest interval at the moment. Certainly my heart rate was still high and my breathing still deep when I started on the next 50.

I think I’m going to set a rule that I need to complete a set without failing three consecutive times before I reduce the target time or the rest interval. Assuming I do this over the next couple of days then I’ll probably reduce the rest interval to 20s and then the next step will be to reduce the target time to 55s and we’ll see how it goes from there.

Last swim of the month, this. Not an impressive total for the month, not even compared to last January when I managed 32.2km. I’m not really expecting a huge increase (if any) over last year, but it would at least be nice to be somewhere close. Not that USRPT sets are about distance, but I’d still like to think I can cover around the same kind of distance as I was doing last year with the new 2018 regime. I reckon once I get the hang of things in an hour and a half there should really be time for a warm-up, a 25 x 50m set, recovery set, 30 x 25m set in a different stroke and swim down with some to spare, which is a decent distance each day. If I stick to 50s for front crawl and do a 25m set in backstroke or breaststroke (or stick to two 25m sets if I want to do shorter front crawl work) that should work until I feel up to doing a 50m set in backstroke or breaststroke.

USRPT distance this year: 2,400m
Total distance this year: 19,500m

Posted in Swimming | Tagged training, USRPT | Leave a comment

Swimming, 30th January 2018

Posted on January 31, 2018 by james

Had to skip Monday. The cellar is being tanked out and split into several rooms and I needed to be around to sort out some details with the builder. More of that in another post or several.

Today I managed to start what I planned to do at the beginning of the month. That is, switch to swimming USRPT sessions instead of longer, slower distances, though given how far I’ve been knocked back by being ill I still had to make things quite easy so I can find a suitable starting point. Today my session was:

500m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 60s, rest interval 25s
200m front crawl swim down

Ended up having to skip two 50s early on (numbers 6 and 8), but did ok from there.

USRPT distance this year: 1,150m
Total distance this year: 17,650m

Posted in Swimming | Tagged training, USRPT | Leave a comment

Swimming, 26th January 2018

Posted on January 31, 2018 by james

Shorter session today — the schools are back in the pool and there’s not as much time on Fridays. Just 1,900m today.

Distance this year: 15,800m