1 January 2025
With British Masters' Long Course Nationals being held at the London Aquatic Centre (LAC) in mid-June, I am determined to make this a year where I put focus on training long course. This is not something I've ever had the luxury of doing as a Masters swimmer, but I am planning to train 1-2 times per week whenever I'm in London at the LAC. So, I kicked off the New Year in style:
I started off with a Test Set I got years ago from Dave Salo's Complete Conditioning for Swimming, and have been doing it pretty religiously as part of my training. It's a great way to both set a Base Pace for aerobic training, and a good way to track conditioning improvements. The set is dead simple - 3 x 300 on 4:30** aiming to hold your best average pace.
I don't have a long history of doing this set long course, as my first time ever was back in October and my last time was November 15th, 2024, where I went 3:50.1, 3:50.3, 3:46.3. I felt pretty horrible on renditions of my standard 1,500 meter warmup and wasn't expecting much. While it hurt like hell and my stroke didn't feel super well-connected, my performance was an uplifting start to the year, splits and stroke rate courtesy of my Finis Smart Goggles.
That put my average 300 at 3:46.2, making my average 100 at 1:15.4. Using Salo's math, this should put my new Base Pace aerobic interval at 1:20, maybe 1:25 if I'm feeling generous.
Not a bad start to 2025.
** If you're doing this at home, set your 300 interval so you get about 30-60 seconds of rest.
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