Swim Workout: The Noose

First of all, I'm happy to say that I have some swimmers who keep track of pesky little details like the yardage totals in my workouts. I accidentally almost gave my swimmers a 2600 yard warmup set! An accountant in Lane 3 is a good thing to have. Let's just say I'm not a morning person. I write up my workouts at night, but in the a.m. when I'm standing in front of the whiteboard trying to translate my notes to action, sometimes things get muddled.

I think maybe this is why I love Winnie the Pooh so very much, I should just always wear t-shirts with Pooh quotes on them, and then that would explain my state of mind precisely. Like maybe this one:

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

-- Winnie the Pooh

That could probably sum up quite a few of my blog posts as well. So if things don't seem very Thingish, just Bear with me (ha ha).

The main set of this workout I borrowed from the fabulous folks at Go Swim.TV, a website with a treasure trove of videos, techniques, drills, and workouts. I was looking specifically for something we could do now that we're 2 weeks out from the big swim meet to keep us sharp without pulverizing my swimmers in yardage. As it turns out, this is quite a challenging main set. As I was swimming struggling through it, I first thought it should be called "Frog in a Pot" because of the old adage that a frog won't jump out of a pot of boiling water if you turn up the heat gradually enough. Then I thought maybe it should be called the "Theory of Relativity Set" because the intervals that seemed tough in the early stages of the set (like the :50), then looked blessedly long by the time you get to the really tough stuff at the end. But I think maybe "The Noose" sums it up because it just keeps getting tighter and tighter around you the whole time. It's a good one, definitely one to keep in your repertoire for a challenging day!


Warm Up

100SKP
4 x (25 head-up crawl + 25 head up halfway down lane)
100SKP
4 x (25 head-up crawl + 25 head up halfway down lane)

3 x 100 Pull, Desc.

1300

Main Set

5 X 50 on 1:05 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:15)
5 X 50 on :55 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:05)
5 X 50 on 1:00 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:10)
5 X 50 on :50 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:00)
5 X 50 on :55 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:05)
5 X 50 on :45 swim (or 4 X 50 on :55)
5 X 50 on :55 swim (or 4 X 50 on 1:00)
Rest break of no more than 1 minute
5 X 50 on :40 swim (or 4 X 50 on :50).

3300 or 2900

100 EZ, 100 Med

4 x 25 Flip & Glide
4 x 25 to Wall hard finish

200 EZ

Total Yardage: 3900