12 October 2022
Today's focus on the road to the USMS 3,000 virtual event was a 2,000 yard swim for time, done at my still-cool-water LA Fitness. I broke out my FINIS Smart Goggles for this, to see how robust the tracking will be for when I do the actual event. Spoiler alert: very, very good.
I did a relatively standard 1,550 yard warmup, but am opting these days to do my first build set of 100s backstroke instead of freestyle to mix up my strokes even more:
1 x 400: IM kick-drill
4 x 100: on 1:30, backstroke descend, 1:20, 1:19+, 1:15, 1:13
1 x 50: easy scull/drill with snorkel
1 x 400: kick for time w/board, dolphin-flutter, was 6:13
1 x 50: easy scull/drill with snorkel
4 x "50": on 1:00, going 25 fast IM order, 25 easy free
Had the Smart Goggles on for this and was 14.7 on fly, 15.5 on back, 21.2 on breast and 16.1 on free
1 x 50: easy scull/drill with snorkel
Yesterday had been a heavy dryland / weight workout (for me) along with some evening yard work, so I was fairly tight throughout the warmup.
Just like with my 1,000 and 1,500 timed efforts in the last two weeks, my aim was to descend my 500s / negative and to do so by managing my stroke count. I aimed for and largely carried out this strokes per length approach:
100 @ 10 strokes per length
200 @ 11 strokes per length
300 @ 12 strokes per length
400 @ 13 strokes per length
100 @ 12 strokes per length
200 @ 13 strokes per length
300 @ 14 strokes per length
400 @ 15 strokes per length
As far as the SMART Goggles, I used the app to adjust the in-goggle display and have it setup so I can peek with my left eye and fairly easily see the lap count. More importantly, there's an easy "Download to Excel" feature in the app such that a few formulas and some extra formatting can get you to a picture like this:
I'm very pleased with the goggles and pretty happy with my performance today. It's a slightly slower average pace (1:10.9) for the 23:37.1 overall time than on my 1,500, but that's OK. And, while the time is not super-speedy, it does point to me that I need to be training to race in the 13-15 strokes per length range.
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