Tag: Interval Swimming

Past is Prologue – The Future Belongs to Gods!

On By AdamIn Running, Swimming5 Comments

Today’s post is a line in the sand, followed by the data from today’s swim.

My best distance run is 15 miles. I have had ambitions to do a marathon for years, ambitions I upgraded to an Iron Man. Sadly when I was working at this I got hit by cars three times in two years whilst cycling. End of Iron Man. I recovered a while ago but had children and real life took over. Now I am feeling ambitious again. My kids are old enough that I have renewed independence and so I have committed myself mentally to pushing into major endurance running. Quite simply, I would like to be an ultra runner. Lofty ideas I know, but you have to believe right?

So, that is my plan. As the summer arrives and the nights get long I am going to push for serious distance, and hopefully by the time autumn is in view I will be hitting ultra distances. I mean, really, how hard can it be?

I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek of course but there is a part of me that genuinely believes in my ability right now. After all, a marathon is just an arbitrary distance. It’s not any kind of universal limit on human endurance. So, with the obvious caveat that it’s going to be hard, how hard can it be? I guess I will soon learn!

Today’s Swim

Here is the day’s swim data. Pushed up to 1250 metres in drills of eight laps. The extra 50 is because I did a ten lap drill by mistake.

Summary

Interval Splits

Graphs

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Negatives into Positives, or Why I Should Read the Manual…

On By AdamIn SwimmingLeave a comment

My Vivoactive HR is now working and producing accurate readings, and I know this because I managed to record two workouts where there ought to have been one. D’oh! My previous swim was 700 metres, 7 x 100 metre drills. I had intended to do 5 x 150 metres to clock a 750 metre swim but sadly I pressed the stop button after drill one rather than pause, and thus I have 150 + 750 metres. The positive side of this error is that I did 900 metres and drills of six laps, which demonstrates further improvement. For the purposes of this post I am discarding the opening 150 metres.

Also, I am now starting to hit serious weight loss and fitness gains. My clothes are hanging off me, I bonked in the pool this time and on my previous run, and I can tell that I am working my body hard because I am finding myself absolutely ravenously hungry after exercise. That always happens when I work my hardest.

Garmin Data

Splits

Graphs

An extra 150 metre drill is only a good thing so I’m calling that a positive. I could just have easily not started again and split the 750 metres into two swim recordings.

View on Strava.

Week in Review, Plus First Running Readings from Vivoactive HR

On By AdamIn Cycling, Diet, Lifestyle, Running, Swimming, The Week in ReviewLeave a comment

After the bizarre readings I took the first time I clocked a swim with my Garmin Vivoactive HR watch I am relieved to have gotten accurate, good quality data when running with it for the first time. It will be interesting to see what happens when I swim again. Hopefully it is just a teething issue but let’s wait and see. My cycling is hovering around the 6 mile mark at 12 minute miles, and to be honest I could cycle 25 miles tomorrow easily so right now my focus is on my weaker sports. I have also maintained my 16/8 fasting routine whilst trying various new recipes, all of which are posted here and on my Instagram.

This week I have pushed my swimming up to 100 metre interval drills, hitting the 700 metre mark. My run below is the longest yet, having added roughly 33% in distance to the last one. The one caveat here is that I ran during storm Clara and thus had to stop a couple of times to avoid torrential rain soaking me wet through.

Garmin Connect Data

Garmin Connect Data Summary
Garmin Connect Data Summary
Garmin Connect Data Summary
Garmin Connect Data Summary

Data Breakdown

Detailed Data Breakdown
Detailed Data Breakdown

Split Times

Split Times
Split Times

Graphs for Heart Rate, Cadence, Heart Rate Zones and So Forth

Cadence, Elevation and Heart Rate Zones

Cadence, Elevation and Heart Rate Zones

Pace and Heart Rate
Pace and Heart Rate

Strava Data

Strava Data
Strava Data

View on Strava and follow me here to get a follow back.

Vivoactive HR and Bizarre Swimming Data

On By AdamIn Swimming2 Comments

This weekend I pushed up my View on Strava to a 700 metre workout, 7 x 100 metre intervals. I also upgraded my watch to a Garmin Vivoactive HR and according to the first data readings I took with it, this is what I did:

Bonkers watch reading

That’s right, according to my watch I swam for 12:59 minutes and covered a distance of zero. As if to drive the point home all other screens had no data, like the one below.

Bonkers watch reading
Bonkers watch reading

I have reached out to Garmin via Twitter, however this is worrying because the reason for my upgrade was spurious workout data, and now this supposedly better watch is apparently even worse. I hope that it is something that can be resolved because I have to believe that such a great company is better than this, but right now for me the jury is out.

Still, that aside, I am successfully pushing harder and extending myself. The watch clocks my resting heart rate at 48 bpm from a previous steady reading of 52 so it looks like my fitness is returning quickly.

Week in Review & Pushing Forward

On By AdamIn Cycling, Hiking, Running, Swimming, The Week in Review

Sports

Last week I couldn’t hike as the weather stank. I ran and swam, and when running I hit that feeling when you suddenly start enjoying it. It happened during my previous run that was spuriously recorded as 3.99 miles when it was actually closer to 1.5. This is not the first time my Garmin Vivoactive has done this and my tweeting Garmin about it was ignored. I have remedied the situation, however, by upgrading to a Garmin Vivoactive HR. It arrived in the mail today so hopefully that will be a step forward that solves this. It’s an obviously better watch with or without the heart rate monitor, but more data can only be a good thing so I look forward to seeing my readings on that front.

Swimming

I am pushing this hard as I enjoy swimming enormously. My latest progress is below, including times, interval splits and frankly more data than I am ever going to need, but here it is anyway.

Summary

Interval Splits and More

Pace, Strokes & Swolf

Cycling

Holding at just over 12mph average. That will change with the weather

Running

Positive growth but I am not going to post spurious GPS data. That would be pointless. Suffice to say my new watch should do better.

Torpedo Mode: Engaged

On By AdamIn Swimming

I’m back in the pool! I always feel as though I glide with ease through the water like a torpedo, even though I only started with a 500 metre swim. Back Doing all of the Swims

Back Doing all of the Swims

I hope that swimming will once again strengthen my back muscles. I will also be doing my incremental growth curve where I push up the distance swam and the number of laps per set. It is amazing how quickly you can push into high distance swimming this way, and how fit you can become in a short space of time.

Strava Data

Strava Data
Strava Data

For whatever it’s worth, this is what Strava made of my swimming based upon data from my Garmin Vivoactive watch.

Late to the Pool Party

On By AdamIn SwimmingLeave a comment

I have not hit this week’s swimming target purely because I arrived late to the pool, which is extremely irritating. I did sets of twelve laps but only had time for five:

You can see I messed up on my intervals and I don’t know why the last set is so long. I must have not operated my watch properly and not pressed stop at the right time. Oh well.

I could have gone on for another hour or even swam nonstop for the full 45 minutes I had so I’m getting fitter quickly. I find this to be extremely satisfying.

Onward and upward…

Week in Review

On By AdamIn The Week in ReviewLeave a comment

Another week of incremental gains passes. Today was to be the day we climb Cat Bells fell in Cumbria but personal circumstances have put paid to that. Thankfully we got a beast of a hike in yesterday, ascending Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. Once the kids are older we are going to try to move over there. It’s such a beautiful place.

Losses and Gains

My swimming and running performance saw steady gains. One thing I will say is that I can definitely feel my age in the pool. This has become that little bit harder and I feel the work I have to do for sure. That being said, the gains are tangible. Yesterday I went through my wardrobe and set aside several pieces, sports jackets and blazers mainly, which I will donate to charity. I’ve gained so much muscle in the last fortnight that I can no longer get them over my shoulders. It has been noted by my good lady that I have changed substantially. She can hardly get her arms around my shoulders now. Add to that the fact that my swimming shorts are falling down rather easily whilst swimming – usually during tumble turns or when I push off from the side – and it’s clear that I’m getting somewhere.

Targets

I’m hoping to push my running into the four mile bracket and hit 1800 metres in the pool in order to prepare for an assault on the 2000 metre mark in the following week.

At some point I will have to decide whether to keep swimming relatively short intervals or to push for longer endurance swims. Previously I have always plumped for the latter, with limited weight loss success. Maybe I can do both. One distance swim and one interval soon would make for an interesting experiment.

What I’d love to do one day is open water swimming. Perhaps that’s something I can treat as a summit to be reached. I have always preferred being outside to indoor exercise. How on earth people have the patience for exercising in a gym is beyond me. I’ve tried it several times and it drives me crazy to be cooped up like that. If you enjoy that sort of thing them have at it. Enjoy your exercise and reward, I’m sure it does you good but I don’t really envy you at all.

Next week I also aim to get Cat Bells fell in the bag. As soon as the days are long enough we are looking to ascend Skiddaw. We live two hours away from Cumbria so the days are too short as yet for a seven hour climb. That’s why our early season hikes are in the Dales. It’s only an hour away with no monstrous peaks. Once the days are long them not only can we tackle the giants, we can also go for weekend camping trips to get the best of the late nights and early starts.

Short Laps, Long Laps, I’m Swimming all the Laps.

On By AdamIn SwimmingLeave a comment

Today’s bizarre swim:

Bizarre because of this breakdown:

Set three is ten laps instead of eight, set four is shortened to six in order to cover that and set six is divided into two due to a goggles malfunction. In addition to that I had two zombie swimmers swin straight across and in front of me and I was checked out in the showers by an old biddy who looked at me and then straight down at my junk.

Don’t try to deny it girls. You know what you do.

On a positive note my shorts keep falling down which means I’m losing weight and this swim is my target of 1200 metres in the bag. Yesterday was a rest day as I was insanely tired.

This trajectory should see me hit 1800 metres by the end of next week.

Lapping Away…

On By AdamIn SwimmingLeave a comment

Today’s swim:

Set four is long due to a goggles malfunction and sadly I encountered the scourge of lap swimmers up and down the country: dreaded fat girl who won’t get out of the fast lane. I really don’t get it. I’m in the one lane set aside for lap swimming and always some epic ham beast gets in and bobs up and down the length of the pool like a lump of whale blubber, doing an approximate ratio of one lap to my ten. They have the entire pool to go at and they always get in my way.

That aside today was progress. As I push into longer intervals the last two laps are always the weariest and hardest, however the last two laps of each set today were nowhere near as difficult as the ones I previously experienced at the end of shorter sets so that means I’m getting stronger and my cardiovascular capacity is increasing.

Cardiovascular Statistics

A nurse friend of mine recently calculated my resting pulse at a strong, rhythmic and regular 54 bpm. The lowest I’ve ever clocked is 44. I think I can hit that again. I’m hoping to finally shed the stone I’ve carried since being hit by cars four times in one year whilst cycling. That had a massive effect on my body. Now that the kids are older and I have more free time I can get into a proper regimen rather than the guerrilla approach young children necessitate.

Keep buggering on…