CSS is hard work

If you've read my blog for longer than two weeks, you've seen my posts on critical swim speed, as per the folks at Swim Smooth. Reading their article in H2Open magazine, I came up with the following workout:

1000 at 16:30

800 at 12:54

600 at 9:30

400 at 6:12

200 at 3:02

I've been doing this workout weekly, but without a watch, I've been relying on the pace clock. Our pace clock does a little half-second stutter every minute, which makes it difficult to use. But now with my Timex Ironman, I can set all five intervals and just swim, no longer having to worry about doing pace clock math (that 12:54 set was particularly difficult).

Well, what I learned today was that those intervals are hard.  My CSS pace is 1:29, and I don't think I kept that pace the entire time today. My times, with my actual pace and how much rest I got, below:

1000 on 15:20 (1:32, R 1:10)

800 on 12:19 (1:32, R 0:35)

600 on 9:14 (1:32, R 0:16)

400 on 6:08 (1:32, R 0:04)

200 on 3:22 (1:42, R haha)

Let me just say that those first four intervals didn't feel that consistent while I was swimming them. I felt dead, which is why I pretty much just gave up on the 200. But I seriously had no idea I was so consistent. I literally just did the math. That's pretty nice, as one of the things that the Swim Smooth folks stress is to maintain your pace throughout the set. However, that is :03 slower than my CSS pace. 

So, I will continue to work on this. I'll retest my CSS in another couple weeks and let you dear reader(s) know.

Comments

[Katie]

I'm glad you're posting about this. It's nice to be able to compare notes.

I thought you were supposed to give yourself a set amount of rest on the CSS sets--I'm going by this: http://www.swimsmooth.com/training.html Maybe you weren't resting long enough to hold your pace?

Nice job on the consistency. Pacing is my Achilles heel, but these sets have helped.

[IronMike]

I think the rest was the extra time in each set. In the 1000, I got an extra :10 per 100, for 1:39/100. It just kept going down after that. That :04 "extra" per 100 in the 400, well, that was tough.

I thought pacing was my Achilles heel also, until I swam this.