And They Win By A Spike....

First volleyball game of the spring season last night. I had to sit out all last season because of that blasted sprained ankle, and was more than a little trepidatious about playing on it. It felt really tight at first in the Achilles, but loosened up and didn't bother me at all after that - hooray! First game we took easily (I can't believe all my serves went in), second game we totally lost (15 - 5, how is that possible), third game came down to rally scoring and only a few minutes left, and we were tied up and it went back and forth until we won it on a spike... by me! Hooray, I can jump again! One more sport I can enjoy once more, four months is a long time to take off from something this fun.

Working From the Core

For years, I've been talking with my swimmers about trying to swim from the core, instead of from the arms and feet. Although we use our core muscles for power in almost every other sport (think of a golfer winding up a swing, or a quarterback twisting that arm way back for the Hail Mary pass), when people swim they often tend to be rather flat in the water, moving only their arms and legs. If they're not flat, they're over-rotating their hips to the sides (often influenced by the Total Immersion method) along with their torso. These styles are the equivalent of giving Barry Bonds a baseball bat and asking him to either hit without moving his hips at all, or asking him to move his hips parallel to his shoulders. In neither case would he be able to muster up enough power to send one out of the park (stand up and try it with an imaginary bat if you don't see what I mean).

So I've believed for a long time that the power in a swimming stroke comes from twisting that core, and while the hips will twist too, to a certain extent, rotating them too far will take some of that power away. The human core is like a gigantic spring of muscles which can store a lot of energy once it is twisted and then unleashed. The bummer is that it's hard to describe this to people and have them just get it and be able to translate it to their swimming stroke.

One of the most exciting drills I learned last weekend was something that I think will really help swimmers feel this concept. We were doing a drill that's something like paddling on a surfboard - arms are flexed at right angles and you're paddling with a very flat and short stroke, with no rotation of the torso at all. One of the things this works on is setting that high elbow catch as well (two birds with one stone here). With the next step, you add rotation of the shoulders, but pretend there's a coffee cup balanced on your hips that you don't want to spill. That lets swimmers feel their torso rotating independently from their hips. Just using these drills the other night with my swimmers, many of them were able to have one of those great "aha" moments where they could feel the muscles they needed to be moving in order to start generating power from their core instead of just from their arms. I love it when that happens.

If you watch videos of great swimmers, like this one of Grant Hackett, you can see the rotation of the upper core, independent from the hips that I'm talking about, and how much power comes from that rotation.

Still Digesting

I spent this last weekend at the Team in Training coaches seminar, given by Dave Scott. It was a pretty intense 2 days of workshops, hands-on technique coaching, and a lot of information. I'm still digesting it all, but you can probably expect to see things start popping out here in this blog that I learned over the weekend. The swim drills were the part I was most excited about, and I wasn't disappointed there. I came away with some new tools for helping my swimmers understand better stroke mechanics. Oh yeah, and I got a killer quick tour of all the wonderful Washington D.C. sights, including an early run down to see the sunrise over the Washington and Lincoln monuments. Unforgettable!

Training With Kids: Part 1

After reading The Dread Pirate Rackham's interesting insights into Training With 5 Year Olds, I thought I'd riff off of that and offer up a few bits of wisdom (or not, you decide) I've discovered over the years of training and racing as a mom with young kids.

Early Years (0-3):

Accessories Are Your Friends

When friends at our church offered to throw us a baby shower for our first-born, the only thing I really wanted and needed was a running stroller. I'd already gotten a heap of cloth diapers, we'd planned to have the baby sleep with us, and with a pair of boobs already in place there was no feeding equipment necessary. So they had a money tree and bought us this great running stroller. Later, we added a Burley bike trailer and a Rhode Gear Limo bike seat to our stash and I was ready to roll with the baby. Unfortunately, the baby had other plans, which brings me to....

Be Flexible

Our son was one of those "extremely high needs" babies that you hear about and secretly wish won't happen to you. Never slept (so neither did I), hated the car seat, the stroller, the bike trailer, and anything that didn't involve being bounced up and down in the sling or nursing 24 x 7. We learned later that he had Sensory Integration Dysfunction (the world was too loud, too bright, too rough, too scary for the little guy) and also food allergies. So our world was turned upside down. Being flexible was the key to getting anything accomplished at all. For many months I couldn't swim - he would start screaming in the daycare at the gym and the ladies would have to come and get me out of the pool. Running sometimes worked out, sometimes not. Sometimes I had to take him out of the stroller and nurse or bounce him once a mile. Being flexible helped me find creative ways to workout whenever I could grab a minute, and I completed my first post-baby triathlon when he was 10 months old, so it all worked out in the end. His needs got met, mine got met, and though I wasn't the active mom-on-the-go I'd pictured myself to be ahead of time, we both were fine. Our second baby was happy as a clam at the gym, in the stroller, or wherever we wanted to drag her along, so things were actually easier with two kids than they were when I just had one. I found that a lot of working out with a baby is finding ways to work with the particular baby you happen to have!

Title Nine Sports Rocks

You might even be too young to know what Title Nine refers to (Google it, girlfriend), but this is hands-down the best place to buy running bras online. When what your husband might happily refer to as the "Boob Fairy" visits, it can be downright upsetting for an athlete who is not used to worrying about the Bounce Factor. Title Nine has a 1, 2, and 3-barbell rating system for bounce control, and sells everything from the Superwoman bra to The Last Resort bra. Don't worry, these things do go back down in size (husbands can get disappointed now), though they may never return to their pre-baby size.

Get Your Workouts In While You Can

When our 2nd kid came along, I got smart and bought a bike trainer and an indoor elliptical machine, so I could work out if they were napping, or I could put on a video for them and get some exercise time in. I would run in the mornings, the evenings, whenever my husband was available for kid duties. We moved to a new town and I started biking everywhere with the kids - trips to the library now doubled as a workout. You might think that miles around town on an old beater bicycle don't count, but I've discovered otherwise. Looking through my last season's journals, I never logged more than five hours on my road bike per week, but managed a 1:09 Olympic distance bike time and a 2:52 Half-Iron bike split, mostly due to a lot of bike commuting and tandem riding with my kids.

There Will Always Be Another Season

As trite as it might sound, babies grow up very quickly. At times, it can sure be frustrating to try to train and compete as a parent of very young kids. But looking back, I'm glad that I made the switch to "triathlete lite" during those years when my kids were babies and young toddlers. It went by all too fast as it was, and while I kept my feet wet with swimming, biking, and running whenever I could, and always did a couple of tris a season, I didn't really turn my head back to getting serious about tris until they were about 5 and 8 years old. By that time, they could ride bikes beside me while I ran, and each of them has done their own triathlon now so they know what it's all about.

Oooooh, Uggghhh, First Brick of the Season

How is it that I can forget every year what it feels like to run off of the bike? I ran for 30 minutes after Saturdays 1:00 Team in Training bike ride, and that first mile was a killer. A couple of years ago I learned that high cadence on the run off of the bike makes a big difference for me in getting through that first mile and luckily I kept that in mind this time around and I always feel better after that first 8 minutes or so. It will be a short and fast Tri season for me this year, probably one sprint and one Oly distance tri is all I'll be fitting in this spring. So I can concentrate more on speed than long distance for the first time in a few years.

More On That High Elbow Catch

Here's a great video that demonstrates the high elbow catch with Sheila Taormina. Another one show's Ian Thorpe's high elbow. And here's a great swim technique video that touches on several points (including the catch) from Dave Scott.

A Swim Workout To Be Eager For

Since starting as the Team in Trainng coach, I've missed my Saturday morning Master's swim workouts, so I have to be content to just do the Master's workout on my own steam when I go in to swim (not nearly so much fun, I have to say).

This weeks' was a good one though. If you want a tough set that will keep your technique tight, try this out:

6 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Focus on technique
5 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
4 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
3 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique
2 x 100 Fast
2 x 50 Technique

Total: 2500 yard main set. I really enjoyed this set as I felt able to swim the fast 100's with really good technique and not let it degrade over the course of such a long and hard set. The good news is that my swim times are continuing to improve. Though my right ankle is still not anywhere near 100%, I am back to a good pace for my fast 100's, stillabout 5 seconds (per 100) off of my pre-injury pace, but much better than a month ago!

It's encouraging to see the speed trickling back in, and although my shoulders are still sore after every swim workout, the new "barrel catch" I mentioned in this previous post is coming along nicely and I can feel the power there that I know will grow over the next six months as my muscles adapt. I can now pull with the pull buoy at a 1:26 average pace, where I was never able to go below 1:30 before (my kick is still a big part of my stroke, I guess I'll never be a true long distance swimmer!), and I think that's all due to that new catch.

Eagerness, The Next Level

After our karate belt tests, Albert Sensei who runs our dojo always has everyone sit down for a pep talk. You never hear the kids moan or groan about it either because he's such a dynamic and engaging speaker and what he has to say is always meaningful in a personal way. Yesterday he was talking about levels of commitment - Obedience, Willingness, and then Eagerness. He stressed that he wants all of us at the dojo to not just be willing to practice karate, or participate in anything in life (even taking out the garbage) but instead be eager to do it.

It got me thinking about my mindset and how it affects my training. For years, I was such a reluctant runner. I only ran because I had to in order to compete in triathlons. I was somewhere between obedient and willing to do it, but I was never ever eager. I would even tell people that I only ran because they had no Swim/Bike duathlons. Then a couple of years ago I decided I really wanted to become a better runner. I asked good runners and coaches about their favorite drills, I checked out books like Chi Running, and I really put some effort into my runs. I did hills, I did strides, I did form drills. And you know what? I not only became a better runner, but I really began to like running. I became, in fact, eager to go for a run. Now that I'm suffering through the rehabilitation of my sprained ankle, I've even found that I've missed running.
















There are so many areas of life that one can work on the eagerness factor. Last night, my husband and I cooked a meal together. To say I'm a reluctant chef would not be overstating the case at all. I actually love to cook and am really pretty good at it (my grandfather even owned his own restaurant, so I must have some cooking genes in there somewhere), but I hate deciding what to make and I hate the mess it makes in the kitchen (that's my engineering brain talking there). But we've decided that, in honor of our upcoming trip to Italy, Saturday nights will be "Italian Night" in our house this year. I checked out the Everyday Italian cookbook from the library, and last night Wayne tackled making a grilled seafood salad (with squid and scallops) and I made a mushroom risotto that was quite heavenly. And we really enjoyed ourselves, you could even say I was eager to get cooking! We all went to the store together and picked up fresh ingredients, stuck an Italian language learning CD in the player and repeated "buona serra" to each other as we cooked.

This week, my aim will be carrying this eagerness forward into all areas of my life. There's no real point in doing anything grudgingly, when you can actually enjoy it (even running, or cleaning up after our Italian feast.

So, How Lucky Am I ??

When I joined this amazing sport of triathlon in 1986, I was just occupied with trying to stay on my bike without falling over in my toeclips, and finishing the run without walking. Meanwhile, on the international scene, Dave Scott was busy winning his 5th Ironman. Ten years later in 1996 as I temporarily hung up my running shoes during the summer of my first pregnancy, he was coming out of retirement for the 2nd time to place again at the Big Show in Hawaii. He's definitely an icon in the sport, and someone who is still actively competing but also coaching, consulting, commentating, and speaking about triathlon.

He's also the National Advisory triathlon coach for Team in Training, and he'll be conducting the coach training session that I'm going to in two weeks! So, how lucky am I?

And by the way, I'll be a nervous wreck come the end of this month - the training is all the way across the country in Washington D.C., and will be the first time ever that I've gotten on an airplane and flown away from my babies. Okay, well they're hardly babies. My big guy borrows my shoes and just got braces, my not-so-little gal grew an inch this month and regularly updates my iPod with bands I haven't even heard of. But still. Yeah, they'll be fine. I'll be a wreck. Luckily, I have the fact of getting to go learn how to be a better tri coach from Dave Scott to keep me cheered up!

Power Juice

Everyone around me is sick, getting over being sick, or starting to get sick. So here's my power drink for the week:

1/2 glass carrot juice
Fill rest of glass with water
Stir in 2 tsp. pomegranite syrup
Dump in a packet of Emergen-C to make it fizzy and high in Vitamin C

Yumm!! My kids think I'm crazy, but I think it's pretty darned good. I'm also cooking about 5 cloves of garlic in everything I make this week. Hopefully the combo will ward off the bugs.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can

You remember reading that corny story about the Little Engine Who Could when you were a kid? My son was so into trains that I read any book with a train theme to him approximately 10,000 times. So I read "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" many times over those years. Yesterday in karate we were doing pushups and our sensei had us yelling with each pushup "I...am...a...future...black...belt" over and over. The ol' Power of Positive Thinking gig. Sometimes we can let ourselves believe that this kind of stuff is "just BS" or really doesn't work. But lately I've seen the results of positive thinking in a big way that confirmed what I've known anecdotally throughout my life.

Just recently, the kids on my robotics team have shown me all over again what kind of power you have when you refuse to be told you can't do something. I have to admit, as they dreamed big about going to the World Championships, there was that nagging adult voice in my brain that said "Don't let them get their hopes up too high or they'll be disappointed." So I tried to be the voice of reason, I tried to tell them that the odds were big, we were one small, relatively new team out of 10,000 teams worldwide. It was all stacked against us, but I was all for them trying. But they knew better. Somehow, they knew that they could do this. When I gathered them together at a local ice cream shop and told them the exciting news, there was no outburst of surprise. They blinked a few times and then smiled. They knew. They knew they could do this all along. I was the one who was not with the game, and that's a great lesson for me to take away. We can do so much more than we think we can if we refuse to let ourselves be limited.

This week, I checked out the DVD of Rudy from the library for our family to watch. If you love sports, any kind of sports, or cinderella stories, you've got to check out Sean Astin in this role. It's not a recent movie, but it's the true story of a kid who really wouldn't take no for an answer. From a blue collar family, he dreamed that one day he would play football for Notre Dame. Despite economic & educational obstacles and his own short stature, he refused to stop believing in his dream, and you know, he accomplished it too.

When I think about my Team in Training team members, the obstacles they're facing and overcoming on a daily basis, it inspires me. I love getting phone calls like the ones I got this week from team members: "I swam and it felt effortless!", "I ran for over an hour, can you believe that!", and all of this just because people think they can do something as amazing as a triathlon!

So yes, when my karate sensei has us all hollering about being a blackbelt, I'll yell it out "loud and proud" as they say in class. Because I do believe it. I can already see that black belt out there in my future, just like my kids could see that world championship in front of them. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can....

A Trip to Seattle and Some Amazing News

We took a short trip to Seattle this week for my sister's birthday. It was beautiful there, reminding me of what a lovely city Seattle is when it's not raining. The snow-covered Olympics and the glassy blue Lake Washington greeted us as we spent a day wandering around the Woodland Park Zoo. I got to run with my sister - it's great to have a little sis' who is active and fun to hang out with. An hour's run gave us plenty of time to catch up, and was the first time I've run more than 4 or 5 miles since my ankle sprain. I had to walk up the steeper hills due to some lingering tenderness in my Achilles tendon, but otherwise was fine!

While we were there, I got this amazing phone call from the woman in charge of Oregon's FLL Robotics program. She told me that the kids' robotics team (that I've been coaching) was nominated to go to the FLL World Festival! They'll be competing with 84 other teams from all over the world (of the 10,000 FLL teams worldwide) in Atlanta, Georgia in mid-April. This will be just an amazing opportunity for my kids and the rest of the kids on our team as well. We are so excited!

It's not looking like this will be a year of triathlons for me. In fact, it's looking like it will be an extremely light tri season with everything else we've got going on. Maybe that's okay though. The last time I took a season off was 1999 when I was pregnant with my daughter, and after 9 years maybe it's time to have another little break.

Foggy Run

The city was wrapped in a deep fog this morning when I headed out to run with our TNT team. The fog was so thick rolling in from the coast over 40 miles away that you could taste the kelp and the sea foam and the ocean. Traffic lights over deserted streets glowed red for long distances and the chill seeped into my bones and didn't come out for an hour or two after I got home.

Still, the thing that stays with me after every workout with this team is the inspiration. Watching people work hard for a goal, hearing their stories of why they're training or why they want to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, it always warms my heart to the very core. Even on a day wrapped in fog.

So, My Husband Was Punching Me Again

Actually, there was a lot of punching going on, and yelling, and a bit of kicking too. And for this, we got a babysitter? Yep, date night at our house: extra karate class. Tuesday and Thursday evenings the class is taught by the husband and wife who run our dojo, and it's an excellent class. The kids sometimes come, but sometimes don't feel like going more than three times a week. So last night it was just hubby and I. Mostly, I'm not paired with him since we're different belt levels. At the start, I was paired with a young teen who is very very talented at karate, fast on his feet, and very serious. We did this extensive sparring drill to warm up and I was breathing hard he asked me a couple of times if I needed to slow down. Hah! I didn't tell him that at that heart rate, I could go for another twelve hours. These young kids might have speed, but they don't have the endurance of an Ironmom, LOL. But I had to work darn hard to beat him to the punch. Now my feet have blisters from all that turning on the floor. DH and I also got to practice together for awhile - elbow techniques, bunkai, and sparring.

We actually have gone out to dinner together this week, and also to a movie. So beating each other up isn't the only kind of quality time we spend together ;-)

Quote of the Day

"Many people cannot excel, even though they practice a lot, because they lack ability. But the fact that they have made a lot of effort means a great deal. The winner in the match is not always the winner in life." -- Toshiro Daigo, 9th Degree Black Belt in Judo.

When I run, I must keep this in mind...

Oh, So That's It!

I was talking to my Master's Swim coach and begging him to watch my stroke. Ever since I modified the "catch" part of my stroke, I knew it would take some time for my arm strength in that specific maneuver to catch up and let me swim efficiently again. But it hasn't seemed to be clicking and I've been slower than ever in the pool. It's been pretty discouraging to tell the truth, because I was hoping that this year I might just participate in a swim meet or two, something I haven't done since college. But I'm slow, slow, slow in the water and everything just feels wrong. I wanted him to take a look and see if he could tell me what was going awry.

Before I could even find a time to get in the pool with him though, he mentioned my ankle injury and asked me if I thought that was the problem. I didn't think so, but on Monday when I swam, I paid close attention to what was going on with my feet. As it turns out, my ankle flexibility on the right foot is almost nil, I'm getting almost nothing out of my kick on that side. Consequently, my arm stroke is all lopsided with propulsion coming with one of my kicks, but not the other. This makes my stroke surge and retreat, giving it a very choppy feel. Additionally, I'm only pushing off of the wall with one foot, completely favoring my other ankle, so I'm getting half the glide off of my turns that I normally do. No wonder I'm swimming so much slower per 100!

I'm so much happier now that I know what the trouble is. I've gotten used to my running being compromised by my ankle, and with over a month off I'm just easing back into that. But I hadn't realized how much it impacted my swimming. Now I know I just have to give it some time. But I wouldn't have realized any of this without my swim coach asking me to give it my attention. So now I just have to have a bit more patience for awhile, and I don't think I'll be sprinting a 100 at a swim meet any time soon!

They're Killing Me! But It's Okay....

So Saturday was my first day back to running after my ankle injury. We had a Team in Training group run, and I figured I would hang out with the run/walkers and give it a good trial to see how it felt. My running coach though had different plans: hill repeats! Up this hill that overlooks downtown. Fortunately, the ankle feels fine, but oh my aching quads and hamstrings now. That's probably not the best way to "ease back into" running.

Then today our karate sensei hammered us with an abdominal workout from hell, somewhere over 300 reps of various ab exercises. I know really strong abs are imperative for karate, and I actually try to do ab work about 5x a week anyways. But taking a class that's used to doing 30 - 50 reps and ramping them up to 300 in one day is a bit of a shock.

Still, I am impressed with what my body can now do. I was remembering how with both of my pregnancies my abdominal muscles split apart right down the middle. You could lay a chalkboard eraser in the trench down the middle of my stomach where they're supposed to meet up after each of my babies was born. I have a very short torso, so my babies just stuck straight out when I was pregnant, and the ab muscles just separated to accomodate that. I had to start with very slow crunches - one or two only - supporting and holding together my abs with both hands. To come from there to being able to knock off 300 reps with the young people in the karate class feels just great.

I was also reminiscing with our Team in Training crew about how I couldn't run a mile after my 2nd kid was born. It really is true that with incremental improvement, we can do amazing things. Just running a bit farther each time, walking a bit less - it really does all add up. I just know our whole team will do great on race day, because I know they can do it. I've been from there to here, and I know they can too.

Faves & Raves

Favorite Pre-Workout Breakfast: I thought I had posted this one up before, but couldn't find it looking through my archives so here it is (maybe again, maybe not!) Since we have our own chickens, we have tons of lovely eggs all the time. I like eating a high-protein breakfast, since it keeps me from the carb-crash later in the morning, but I get tired of just eggs. I love oatmeal, but it doesn't seem to stick with me very long, within an hour or so I'm hungry or just feeling low in the energy department. So this is my solution:

Robin's Breakfast Oatmeal Custard:

1 Cup Organic Steel Cut oats
2 Eggs
3 Tbs Milk
Cinnamon and Nutmeg to Taste

Cook up the steel-cut oats according to directions. While the oats are cooking, which only takes a few minutes, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon & nutmeg. Pour the cooked oats into the egg mixture in a microwaveable bowl (make sure you use a big enough bowl as this mixture will puff up as it cooks). Stir in any (or all) of the following:

Dried cranberries
Raisins
Chopped Dates
Dried unsweetened coconut
Walnuts or Pecans

Bake in the microwave for 4:30 (cooking times will vary, but it will get solid looking all the way through). Serve with milk.

Rave: A friend of mine who was training for the Eugene Marathon got hit by a car in a crosswalk two weeks ago. That's bad enough for any ordinary human, but for an avid runner to have a broken leg or two is doubly agonizing. As athletes, we know how dangerous it is to run anywhere near large two-ton hunks of moving metal, but we don't often have a choice. Remember to wear reflective gear and blinkies in the dusk, dawn, and nighttime hours. I believe my Illuminite jacket and headband saved my friend one night - we were on bikes and the car that was going to smash into her only stopped once its headlights hit my jacket - the blinkies on the front and back of her bike were not pointed in the driver's direction at the time.

Fave Music on my iPod Right Now: Aman Iman: Water is Life, by Tinariwen. I'm not always a fan of world-beat music, but this band definitely catches the ear and holds on to it. Formed in 1982 in Moammar al-Qadhafi's camps of Tuareg rebels, these musicians take musical roots from their own traditions, and combine it with bluesy guitars for a totally unique sound. The lyrics are mostly in French and Tamashek, but the beats are unescapably good, and the theme of their music is independence for their people.

Fave Book On My Nightstand: The Warrior's Path: Wisdom from Contemporary Martial Arts Masters Despite the cumbersome title, this is a gem of a book with photos and words of fifteen martial arts masters who have dedicated a lifetime to their practice. Many of them were born in Japan in the early part of the 1900s. All of them have decades of wisdom that anyone striving to better themselves in any practice can appreciate.


Favorite Quote: From the above book: "You can easily recognize whether the archer hit the target or not. But this is not what we should be judging for success. Did the archer tackle kyudo with an empty mind, one that will create a healthy body and healthy mind? That is the Way that kyudo is seeking - whether the archer has contributed to a healthy society. Of course there are targets to shoot, to aim for, but hitting the target is not the final goal. In kyudo we say "Shoot at your heart" -- shoot at your conscious thoughts. You yourself must recognize whether you exerted the utmost effort toward the target. How many arrows were shot is not important -- the contents of those arrows is what counts." -- Nobuyuki Kamogawa.

I am absorbing much from this book that is relevant to my own martial arts training, but also to triathlon and other sports, and to my endeavors as a teacher and coach to others.

And Another

Since my ankle sprain is still keeping me from running (though I did a very very chilly bike ride with my Team in Training team this Saturday - 36 degrees before you figure in the very brisk wind chill, and sleeting rain!), I'm in the pool a lot more these days. Here's another great distance swimmer's workout:

Warm up and then:

6 x 500, Descend x 3 on 8:00 (or interval of choice). 2nd set faster than 1st.

When I do these, I aim to do the first one at a total cruise, then medium, then pretty fast. The second time through, I go about 15 seconds faster on each one than the first time around. By the time you're done, you should feel good and thrashed!

Triathlon Swim Workout

I coached the morning master's this week (5:15 am - eeeeouch!). The workout I put up is a great one for any distance swimmer looking to improve their time in anything from a 500 to an open water mile or more. After a good warmup, this is the main set of 2,000 yards.

2x the following:
=============
50-50
50-100
50-150
50-200
50-250


The first time through, you go easy on the 50's, and really work the longer distances - they should be swum at your distance tempo pace, the kind of pace you would swim a hard 500 at. Take 10 sec. rest after the 50's, and 20 sec after the longer distances.

The second time through, you swim the 50's hard, and the longer distances at your long distance pace, the pace you would set for a 1500. Take 20 sec. rest after the 50's, and 10 sec after the longer distances.