Day 60 - 16 x 100 plus 600 yd - 1/5/12

It's been a while, just about a month, since my last pool visit.  That last one was a series of 100 yd sets to try and increase efficiency by trying to reduce the number of strokes per lap.  At that time, I found I was between 15.5-16.5, depending on whether it was the first 25 yds, or the final 25 yds.  When I decided to hit the pool again today, I wasn't sure what to do - since it had been a month, should I just go for a mile and a half, since I likely forgot some of the nuances from the last session, or should I repeat that effort?

I ended up going with repeating the attempt to increase streamlining.  In a sense, it'd be more necessary now with a layoff than before.  Plus, unless I had something to work from on a long swim, it'd likely not see any improvement.

I ended up doing 16 x 100 yd sets today, and found myself in the same 15.5-16.5 ballpark.  The resultant times were pretty consistently under 44 seconds per lap, but I usually lost anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of a second on the second set of 50.  This is information I didn't have the first time around, so having an idea of how much is lost is kinda nice.  Not sure what to do with that data, but at least I have it.

After about nine sets, when the stroke count started to climb consistently to the 16-16.5 range, I decided to try extending the glide even more - knowing it would slow me down a bit, but maybe there'd be benefit to feeling the glide stretched out.  My times went up to the 44-47 seconds per lap range, but many of those sessions did bring the number of strokes back down to the 15.5 to 16 range.  Again, possibly something that is nice to know, but not sure what to do with that information yet.

At sixteen sets, I decided to see what, if any, difference I could sense by doing a continuous swim.  I ended up doing an additional 600 yds, knowing my stroke count would increase, but maybe the times would improve slightly.  For those 12 laps, the average time was 50.58, and if I recall correctly, I was typically in the 18-19.5 strokes per lap range.  My last long swim had an average time of 50.18 seconds per lap - but that was over a total of 54 laps, whereas these laps today were after 1600 yds of more intense swimming.  So I suppose some drop off is expected.