It’s all right for some!
On the plus side I managed to work through my own rage and get 3200m in @1:45, although various breaks for traffic, and fighting obvs.
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There is a lane now at Walnuts a couple of evenings el niño swims , but it looks awful. Theres little cliques and all so slow. It’s almost like this group pre book it.
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When I swam in the local pool in the evenings it would generally be me, a guy who was a swim kid swims masters and sometimes another triathlete in the fast lane. When a head-up breaststroker got lost in there. I would ask the swimmer to do a few lengths of butterfly and that would cleat them out.
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All good practice for mass starts!
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No mid lane drama for me on Wednesday evening, but I did get hugely pissed off.
5 Lane pool, a club taking up two lanes. Therefore 3 to use for general public. All bloody 3 were being used by 6 breast-strokers collectively. It was infuriating. I asked the lifeguard to ask them to consolidate in one lane, she said she wasn’t allowed but agreed with me, and in the meantime some of the swimmers all started ganging up on me aggressively asking me what my problem was. When I countered with “see this fast lane sign here” they just turned around and carried on swimming.
Thankfully, they were all so shit that after waiting 5-10mins at the end of the lane in a huff, they were all knackered and got out. Once I managed to start swimming, it seemed like normal order was established, and only competent swimmers got in the fast lane and everyone else used the others.
I just don’t get peoples mindsets. You could comfortably have 12 people in a single lane if they’re all roughly going the same speed. Yet their approach means everyone has a crap time
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Had a couple of coached sessions with the tri club. It was pretty quiet, so lots of time with the coach. The good news is that I have discovered what has happened to my swim, and a few tweeks and I was swimming 100’s in the 1:30’s pretty well, and even had some 100’s in the 1:20’s. I need to do more time in the pool and work on upper body muscles, so that I can maintain the pace for 3800m not just 100m.
Going back to @Hammerer comment about Joe Skipper and swimming with kids team. I was early at the pool and watched the last few minutes of the U18’s team training, they were swimming 10 x 50’s in 30s with 15s rest, it looked really impressive, no idea if that is a hard effort for a swim squad… totally impossible for me to even conceive of swimming that fast for a singe 50m
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That’s hard, even for a top swimmer would be above AT and a lactate tolerance set
If it was full sprinting though, they’d maybe be taking a good couple of minutes rest after each one. Winter regionals coming up here in next couple of months so maybe similar large scale events coming up over there and building into it.
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I just caught the last 7 minutes, before this set they were doing kicking drills. when they finished they did a cool down, so I guess that the session has been building up to this set. Its a big swim squad and has produced a few Olympic swimmers, also its coached in English as lots of international kids seem to train there
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I do a lot of “take it home” stuff in sessions, so we will do say 800 SKiPs WU (200Fc, 200Kick of FC, Bk and Fly Fr and Bk) then 200pull, 200 Bk), 16x25 FC pre main (30BBM), then main will gradually build through the session focus but we always do some “take home” sprints at end (usually via relay races with the kids) Swim England actually criticised my CD as I’d only do 200-400m but they forget that sometimes you don’t have time to do a decent long CD and that kids are active generally so naturally slow down gradually. I do get their point though that 3- 6mins of easy swimming is not ideal.
A single set of 10x50 off :45 hitting 30s won’t be ‘that’ hard for some of the top swimmers at a big swim squad at national level, just a little sharp finisher to promote some speed, or they might have done that repeated multiple times.
If they can swim <4:10 for 400 then hitting 30s for 50s with that much rest shouldn’t be too hard.
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True, we only have 2 British nationals qualifiers (and an English qf) in top, both U15s , neither GB are great Front Crawlers (Fly and Br) , 400 times are anywhere from 4.20ish to over 5, but most avoid the long stuff!. At a recent T20 only a handful actually broke 1500m! I’ve coached faster triathletes! I was actually shocked first time I took our top squad at their FC. Covid has had a massive effect. We had March - October out then Jan to Apr during peak development, which every club has had, but means times are way down on pre covid levels.
Before anyone comments on my coaching I’ve only covered top a few times , that’s HC job 
.
How are people finding attendance at their swim sessions? I’ve given up on laned swims with the general public as they are all cunts but flit about 3 different club sessions depending on which nights I can get out.
The last three sessions I have done there have been 2, 3 & lonely old me in my lane. I can’t remember if this is normal off season behaviour or do people think “Fuck, yeh, nah I now know that with 8 weeks swimming I can get back to were I was?”
ETA I would like more people in my lane as I loves the competition.
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The attendance at my club has been down a bit and another local tri club have dropped their swim sessions as weren’t getting enough to break even. We don’t break even either but we’ve a bit in the bank to manage the quiet times, at least for a while.
There’s always a lull this time of year when people take a break after the end of the season then often get back into it around Christmas, but this does feel a bit different.
ps. We started a new OW venue this year, expecting it to be really busy, and that only just kept our heads above water too.
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Yeah, this time of year is generally the downtime, but it has been slightly surprising nonetheless that our clubs spots are not selling out at all. Pre-Covid, they’d usually all be gone within 30s of the sign up link going live. It was like getting into Roth every week!
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@Hammerer have a listen to the latest That Triathlon Show podcst when you get a chance, and haven’t already. It is with Russ Barber who does the Leeds Tri swim sessions.
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Was going to recommend the same, was good to listen to.
A lot of respect for Russ from when he was at Sheffield.
I’ll dig that out.
I started back at tri club this week, finally got one of the pools back. 3 lanes from 8yr old struggling to swim 50m to 14 and 15yrs old doing 2.30ish 200. Challenging ain’t the word. Shame really as the top lane have potential but my whole session is basically with the tristarts. Need a coach each lane as we used to do but finances!.. and we have to use whole pool not just 3 lanes so adults in other half with one coach. Covid rules are shyte.
Winter regionals this weekend as well some good medal chances and one or two looking for national times. We got a 15yr old already QF for national short course at Ponds Forge in 200fly with a 2.16 , a year early so great achievement (nats are <=16 or 17+).
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First swim back
Must…not…complain…about…other…swimmers…
467m warm up
Double lane, only three other swimmer
4x33m
They’re triathletes
5x200
They stand around in the middle of the double lane for ages
132m easy
And only push off the wall when I’m hitting my turn
132m IM
Face full of triathlete. At least she apologised
Watch kind of working, around 1:52/100 which is my usual return-to-swimming pace. Pretty tiring but again, no more than expected.
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Just listening to it now myself, there’s a small discussion on heart rate which seems similar to what @Hammerer said above above beats above and beats below threshold.
Having a look at my 200s today, there seems to be quite a bit of variability on the averages 143,151, 157,155,149. Is wrist HRM completely useless here or is it more a case of getting back into training, regularising pace and rest intervals?
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Yes, also, his talk about improving distance per stroke, efficeincy, etc. Seemed right up his street to me.
I see Russ Barber each morning I swim, shoulkd see if he fancies doing a TT swim weekend workshop. It tickles me how un-flash that squad is, I know they don’t earn footballer type money but all seem really down to earth, happy to have a chat, etc.
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