Swim: Bring It On!

As I’ve said many times through my race reports over the past season, my swim needs some serious attention.  As an Age-Grouper, it was always my weakness, but it never really held me back.  A decent swim, followed by a strong bike and run, was often enough to get on the Age-Group or Overall Amateur Podium.  While you can fake your way as an AG’er to a good finish, there is no way this works in the Pro Field where everyone is strong all-around and a weak swim is quickly exposed in a few ways.  Most importantly when you miss swimming with the main pack you are working harder than necessary in the water without the draft.  This means time lost in the water and extra energy spent.  Next, you also miss biking with the main pack.  Not only does this eliminate the minor, but still noticeable benefit of the legal paceline, you also lose the psychological benefit of riding next to your competition.  Again, working harder and going slower.  This scenario always left me off the back pack starting the run, and I was left trying to run my way up a couple of places. 

In the past, my swim volume was sufficient, but never great.  Typically, I was in the pool 3 times per week, sometimes more, sometimes less with an average volume of 9km – 12 km.  Again, not much by swimmer standards or even triathlete standards; just sufficient for what I needed at the time.  I definitely hit a performance plateau with this volume and frequency over the past year.  Equally as important, I have no swimming background prior to triathlon, so I need to work harder now to bring my swim skills up to where they need to be.  The result?  Extra time in the pool and a swim focus this off-season.

So back to my training….Over the past couple of weeks, I started to get back to consistent training, with an even balance of swim, bike and run.  Last week was a different story.  This was my first swim focus week.  Instead of fitting in an extra bike or run if time allowed, I hit the pool.  Definitely a change in approach for me where the pool was always the last place I would’ve gone if I had some extra time.  The result: I hit 15km for the week, which is my highest weekly volume I’ve ever done, and I made it to the pool 5 times.  Again, still not huge volume, but it’s a good start for my first focus week back.  Throw in a couple of decent rides and runs, and overall, I think my 2013 training is off to a good start!