Offseason swim improvements

I've been swimming with Technosport this past week, and it's been an interesting experience. I signed up for a stroke analysis camp last Sunday and as part of that camp you get get a week swimming with the club. So in addition to the Sunday session I swam with them Monday, Wednesday, and again this Sunday.

Last season I was pretty happy with how I swam. From just trying to make it through the swim in 2014 to consistently being in the first chase pack in 2015 was more than I had thought possible, given my limited time in the pool. 2 nights a week was all I ever did, and I know this shouldn't be enough to see any real swim gains.

Sure enough I did plateau pretty early last season. My results were good, but I wasn't getting any better after seeing some significant improvements over the first few months of 2015. Ideally I'd be in the pool at least 3-4 days a week, but with two young kids, a job that frequently demands lots of after-hours work, and two other sports to train for, it's just not feasible.

I put in a big run focus in September and October to improve my weakest discipline, and finished off that block with a 5km road race. Then my focus shifted to swimming. I still can't dedicate a lot of pool time, but the offseason is a great opportunity to fine-tune the stroke, hence the stroke-analysis camp.

I got some good feedback and some helpful drills to work on, and by the end of my time with the club I felt more powerful with less effort. Starting off the session with some 3-stroke drill really seems to help me with rotation and lengthening my stroke, so I'm going to work that into every session now.

I'm going to get back to two swims a week, with one session being a speedwork oriented session like I've been doing for the past year, and a session aimed at improving my Critical Swim Speed. I'll try to do a test this week depending on how I feel then get started with the plan. Getting up at 5:30am to swim with the club, coupled with a sick 5 year old and some rough nights with the 1 year old meant I was pretty drained by the end of the week and it was inevitable I would contract whatever my 5 year old had. I've keep it somewhat at bay with vitamin C, echinacea, elderberry, and eating raw garlic cloves - plus taking two days off training. I don't think I'll be in tip-top shape for a time trial on Tuesday, though, so we'll see if I get to that or not. In the meantime I'm back to running and the bike training is going well, so I'm full-on into my training schedule now, which last year didn't start until January.

Training with Power

The bike was my strongest discipline this past season, but I know there's lots of room for improvement. My training last season certainly wasn't haphazard - I planned out a periodized approach to the season with a base phase, build phase, and then a race-specific phase. I used videos from Sufferfest and CTXC to structure my workouts and used RPE for my intervals and heart rate training for my easy rides.

It all worked pretty well, and I put down some pretty good bike splits in my races. The only time I ever doubted my biking was in my last race, the Thousand Islands Olympic Tri. Specifically, I was unsure of how hard to go - I didn't want to leave any minutes or seconds on the table but didn't want to overbike and pay for it on the run. I still second-guessed my efforts long after that race was over.

I had planned for a while that this offseason I would train with a power meter, and it's now installed and operating. I went with a Power2Max unit - by all accounts they are reliable, accurate, and are relatively affordable. I didn't have the tool to do the bottom bracket swap so called in Adam from Velofix to do the installation (and take a look at my rear derailleur issue).

I'm using Trainerroad for my workouts and training plans and have a dual screen setup in my pain cave with trainerroad on one screen and whatever I'm watching on the other. Immediately apparent is that there is a significant difference between pacing a Time Trial based on RPE and using power. Keeping a steady, sustainable RPE over the course of a TT for my first FTP test resulted in steadily declining power. It took a couple tries to get the hang of properly pacing the tests, and I can already tell that having this tool is going to help immensely both in training and in pacing a race. It's great to have the power data to both guide my training sessions, and to look at afterwards.

I took some time off at the end of the season to let my saddle sores heal up, and then biked somewhat sporadically in an unstructured manner. I know my bike fitness has suffered a little, but I'm also confident it'll come back and I'll be able to make some gains and hit next season better than ever. The base phase for next season begins this week.