Hi TheEd,
Good to hear from you! The swim sessions vary depending on the time of year and how close we are to a race.
They generally always include intervals of 100s and 200s, sometimes 50s and sometimes 300s or 400s. Occasionally 25s too.
More recently (in line with my belief that I was overtraining) I've starting doing one session a week based on "CSS pace" which is more sustainable, like tempo running. The other session is still harder.
However, now we are within a month of a race I'm doing 1 swim a week in the open water. I usually do a few loops, practising starts and finishes running into/out of the water with some steady swimming in the middle of the loop. But last week I went to an open water group for the first time and we did a warm up and then three "races" which were about 700m each. They weren't all out, but there were pretty solid. Garmin gave me a 3-4 day recovery time after that.
The second "hard" swim last week was 2 days after the open water group. I did 25x100 at CSS pace. I probably needed an easier session as I was still recovering from the open water session. Recovery went back up to 4 days...
But on the whole I'm feeling good. Garmin's 5k race predictor has come down to 19:46, which is the lowest I've seen it. It dropped from 20:30 to 20:15 (roughly) after the last Parkrun, when my max HR went up. It dropped another 15 secs in the first week of Jan when I just did a week of easy long runs. And it's dropped another 15 secs since then.
Last Saturday I ended up doing about 6k with 3x4 mins tempo in there.
Today I did just under 10k easy.
Tomorrow I'm planning 1-2k easy brick run off the bike (hard VO2 40s/20s session)
Wednesday I was going to do something like 3x8 mins tempo running and then that open water group again in the evening.
Thursday is a hard threshold ride.
Friday I want to try the 3x2k threshold (4:15, 4:10, 4:05)
And then it's a weekend off because I'm going camping.
Btw TrainerRoad is mostly based around 3 weeks on and then an easier week, which might work well with your 3 week structure.
Cheers,
GM
PS snuck in a reply before maintenance mode lands!
Good to hear from you! The swim sessions vary depending on the time of year and how close we are to a race.
They generally always include intervals of 100s and 200s, sometimes 50s and sometimes 300s or 400s. Occasionally 25s too.
More recently (in line with my belief that I was overtraining) I've starting doing one session a week based on "CSS pace" which is more sustainable, like tempo running. The other session is still harder.
However, now we are within a month of a race I'm doing 1 swim a week in the open water. I usually do a few loops, practising starts and finishes running into/out of the water with some steady swimming in the middle of the loop. But last week I went to an open water group for the first time and we did a warm up and then three "races" which were about 700m each. They weren't all out, but there were pretty solid. Garmin gave me a 3-4 day recovery time after that.
The second "hard" swim last week was 2 days after the open water group. I did 25x100 at CSS pace. I probably needed an easier session as I was still recovering from the open water session. Recovery went back up to 4 days...
But on the whole I'm feeling good. Garmin's 5k race predictor has come down to 19:46, which is the lowest I've seen it. It dropped from 20:30 to 20:15 (roughly) after the last Parkrun, when my max HR went up. It dropped another 15 secs in the first week of Jan when I just did a week of easy long runs. And it's dropped another 15 secs since then.
Last Saturday I ended up doing about 6k with 3x4 mins tempo in there.
Today I did just under 10k easy.
Tomorrow I'm planning 1-2k easy brick run off the bike (hard VO2 40s/20s session)
Wednesday I was going to do something like 3x8 mins tempo running and then that open water group again in the evening.
Thursday is a hard threshold ride.
Friday I want to try the 3x2k threshold (4:15, 4:10, 4:05)
And then it's a weekend off because I'm going camping.
Btw TrainerRoad is mostly based around 3 weeks on and then an easier week, which might work well with your 3 week structure.
Cheers,
GM
PS snuck in a reply before maintenance mode lands!