So close! 1500 in 25:03.
Significantly faster than last month though (25:42). Since they replaced the pump motor in the pool last weekend it has gotten much warmer, 31 degrees at the moment apparently (normally ~28) and I was suffering in the last 500.
This isnt going to happen at the local council pool, but asking around I’ve found someone 20 minutes from me with an Endless Pool in the garden so trying to work something out there…
Pretty much at the end of my two months of trying to up swim frequency to 3 times a week, before I move jobs next week. Managed 11:05 in October, currently at 10:03 for November so will finish at 12hrs.
10x200 Fc this morning, set I use roughly every 4-6 weeks during season as a test set. Best result for 2.5 years, so I’m happy with that!
To try maintain (and hope maybe little bit more improv) I have set goal to average 2hrs swim per week from 1st Jan to 1st June, managed 1.7hrs this year.
SO…like I said in the “Training…” thread, I was aiming to carve out some time for a CSS Test this week…
…after taking Saturday off completely and doing a very easy hour jog yesterday, followed by a boring hour spin this morning, I felt good at 1130, so I nipped over to the pool to smash out my CSS Test 
Last one was on 3rd October at 1214 (a good time for me!) and ended up with a 6:04 400m and a 2:52 200m - giving a CSS of 1:36/100m
Since that last CSS test, I’ve swam 5 times per week, averaging 2.5hrs per week active time covering 10km in total.
Nothing special, just one or two squad swims, two drills sets and one shorter recovery swim.
I’ve just swam more and thought more about what I am doing - the only “new” thing I have done is bring in the BAND only drills and also some slightly longer sets (200/300/400), though I have not done a lot of these.
anyway…
…pretty much the same protocol (just skipped 100m warm up and 100m in the cool down)
400 in 5:43 (21 second improvement in 8 weeks) - 1:24, 1:26, 1:28, 1:25 (!)
200 in 2:42 (10 second improvement in 8 weeks) - 1:21, 1:21
CSS of 1:31/100m (5 second improvement in 8 weeks)
Summary is - my endurance is still GARBAGE 
(@Hammerer - I tried to look up my LTS PBs on my Blog on the archive site, but cannot access it, any ideas?)
That works out at about a 6% drop-off compared to their recommended max. of 3%. Having said that, I think there’s some mileage in that 400m time as picking up to 1:25 at the end suggests you paced it a bit conservatively and you’re only looking at 8-10s to get in to the 3% bracket.
Great improvement though as it’s not like you were starting at over 2:00/100m where improvements come easy.
Nice work Poet. That CSS result about matches my best ever. I think I was about 5:45ish for the 400. That’s some good going in a relatively short amount of time. The pacing on the 400 definitely would say you have a tad more in the tank. Even the pro’s positive split (e.g. female WR started with an opening 50 of 27.73, the three 50’s in the middle were up over 30s, and then dropped the final 50 to 28:92).
I actually just did that exact same set at lunchtime, although I imagine your numbers will be in a totally different league! It’s horrible to see how much I’ve dropped off with the enforced lay off from swimming. I managed to hold 1:35’s pretty much throughout. But the effort was right up there by the end at well above threshold RPE. Seeing as I’ve held under 1:32 pace in that same pool for 2k continuous (and that was only in August), I have a fair bit of work to do
Cheers. And @JaRok2300 
My 200 was virtually all 20.x seconds per length…according to the untrustworthy watch lap!
I think I might go out at 200 pace and see if I can make it through and not faint 
After the 400, the lifeguard came over and asked if I was okay 
You’ll have to go to original.tritalk.co.uk . I tried a screen scrape and uploaded to an S3 bucket and pointed archive.tritalk at it which seemed fine at first but there seems to be an issue with the blogs and the images so I’m going to have to go to plan C i think. I haven’t got a Plan C yet though unfortunately
yep @Poet your SDI is 1.08 and average or Target Fatigue Decay is about 1.06 so with that 200 a predicted 400 of 5:38 is possible so a bit more speed endurance work there may help if it was a short term goal. Your current predicted 1500 is 23:54 but with more endurance a 22:51 should be possible.
Cheers
I have it now
------ Personal Bests -------
Swim
25m - 0:16.8
50m - 0:36.00
100m - 1:17.00
200m - 2:40.19
400m - 5:25.37
500m - 7:07.64
750m - 11:11.10
1000m - 14:48.23
1500m - 22:33.13
1900m - 28:35.52 (29:53 OW)
3800m - 57:44.16 (59:19 OW)
What does this mean?
I’ve not heard of these terms before…
…I knew my 400 PB was ridiculous and flattered me!
Good news, is that I reckon I could beat my 50 and 200 PBs now, not sure on the 100, as that looks a little bit tasty!
Good swimming there @Poet, not sure triathletes should be swimming that often for long though 
so SDI is sprint decay index, basically the amount you drop off in speed over distance. A little equation then works out what you should be able to do for different distances. TFD is basically a target of drop off. 1.06 is obviously less than 1.08 so your speed drops off a bit too much so endurance / speed endurance may be lacking a bit. If you were at 1.03 or something then it could potentially be you are at the limit of endurance for your technical capabilities so top end / technique could need more work. I use it and plug pb’s in over a couple of distances, usually 100 and 400 for triathletes and see what i feel they could be capable of and use it to guide on target times
That should really bug @Poet, because it’s the swimming equivalent of VI right? 
Where do you plug it in?
Not really. It’d be the equivalent of the slope of a power duration curve. VI would be along the lines of how evenly you paced each length within a given interval (1.00 being they all matched, and higher being you had some over exuberant lengths, but then had to have some slower ones)
“VI” for the 200 is negligible.
I’m well aware my endurance/speed endurance needs work 
I’m trying to get to 29/58 for 1.9/3.8.
Get out of the water so it feels like I’ve not wrestled a bear!
And to latch onto someone’s wheel…
i’d be quite happy to get out of the water for the 3.8 with the 58 and 29 added together!
I’ve done them before, in the pool, so just need to convert it to open water…oh…and capture that 1:23 CSS again
First proper swim since October. Just a mixture of 100 and 200s - I’m going to feel that in the morning. Felt great to be back in the pool though