20 December 2024
I think I'll get a lot more takers on this fun main set versus the last set I posted ;)
I first did the MEMO (Marcia's Enthusiastic Masters of Oakland*) Swim Team's annual 400 Kick-for-Time (KFT) virtual event back in 2013 and have done it every year since**. They run this in the month of December and it's a fun way to work on an aspect of my training I should do more of throughout the year, and as yet another benchmark to track over the years.
I kind of did a little 'taper' for my timed effort today, taking off Tuesday and Thursday from swimming and just doing our 5 x 50 on 5-6:00 from a dive as the main set on Wednesday night. I figured easing back a bit would both help me perform on the 400 KFT this morning and might help me not suck on the six events I am going to race (in about 3 hours) this weekend at the Basingstoke Bluefins Last Chance Decathlon Meet.
I went down to my new favorite London pool for 25-meter open lap swimming, the beautiful Clissold Leisure Centre, bringing my Finis Smart Goggles as my timing device. I really enjoy using these goggles whenever I want to time myself as they produce splits by the length which are downloadable in CSV format, so I can quickly manipulate them to sum up splits at any distance desired.
But, before we get to the result, I have to shout out to the London weather gods, to the tiniest coffee shop setup in Clissold Park, and to the friendly dogs of said park, who crowded around the mobile cafe because the barista/owner apparently always brings dog treats. I'd call that a savvy investment as many dogs play off leash here in the morning, and I saw a number of them leading their owners over to this coffee stand. The scene ended up with dogs lined up to the left getting treats and people lined up to the right getting our caffeine treats:
As for my swim, I did about 1500 of various standard warmup sets, with a bit more kick versus swim efforts and launched into my 400 when I was down to only sharing one of the two fast lanes with only one other swimmer. The result, 6:11.50, was almost 10 seconds faster than last year (6:20.90):
Marcia asks us to use the SwimSwam Time Conversion Tool to get this back to SCY, making this technically my fastest ever time. The one change I made this year was to move from a 50/50 dolphin/flutter mix to a 25/75 mix in favor of freestyle. While my one length dolphin kick is faster than my one length flutter kick, I think dolphin takes more out of me. Here's how I've fared over the years:
* Though they workout these days in Alameda
** Officially, I missed 2015 as I never got an official timed effort, so I didn't enter that year ... but I did do a 'pace clock' effort that year.
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