Taper intervals

With all the python stuff I forgot to spend some time on Sunday to plan this week’s training plan in detail.

So in the morning I drove to the club with only a vague notion. I wanted to test a bit at race pace, but have a short training. One, it’s taper week. Two, I was late and needed to be at work in time. I contemplated 500m intervals at race pace.

At the club I met the head coach, and I asked him what he was planning for his team (the men). They were doing

5x(5min)/R4 at 22/24/26/28/30 spm

That was an interesting session. Good training at race pace, but it starts slower, so you can focus on technique and build up to the race pace. I was sold, but I made it slightly lighter:

4x(4min)/R4 at 22/24/26/28. Last minute in last interval to be at 30spm

Here is how I executed it:


Workout Summary - C:Downloads2016-04-05-0730.CSV
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|03727|16:00.0|02:08.8|24.9|165.5|172.2|09.4
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
01|00912| 04:00 |02:11.6|21.5|156.0|161.0|10.6| 22spm, tailwind
02|00950| 04:00 |02:06.3|24.2|166.0|172.0|09.8| 24spm, tailwind
03|00884| 04:00 |02:15.7|25.7|171.0|177.0|08.6| 26spm, headwind
04|00981| 04:00 |02:02.3|28.0|169.0|179.0|08.8| 28spm, tailwind


Actually, the 26spm and 28spm felt more comfortable than the 22spm and the 24spm. I guess that is good. I also used stroke counting on those sessions, so maybe it is just a psychological thing. The 4 minutes seem to pass faster when you count to 100.