Fast Friday

I was dismayed when I walked onto the pool deck yesterday and the coach announced it was "Fast Friday." This is the kind of workout I typically despise – 100 meter sprints with lots of rest. The object, of course, is to go all out on all of them (I have always had a problem with the term all out. If you go all out on the first one, you shouldn't have anything left for the rest of the set). For as long as I have been a swimmer, sprint workouts have been my Achilles heel. The lactate builds quickly with my arms and legs burning in protest at the effort and sometimes I barely eke out times faster than a longer set on shorter rest. It is ridiculous that a set of 10x100 with some hard 50’s kick interspersed is more tedious and painful than a set of 3x1000, but for my metronome style, it is. When the workout was over, satisfied with my performance and the gains that it will bestow, I thought about the importance of doing workouts that take us so far out of our comfort zone.

Engage Your Lats

Over the weekend I spent an afternoon at a swim meet. My niece and nephew, Jamie and Max, have been swimming for five years; they started with the requisite swim lessons and progressed to the team atmosphere. They were entered in swim meets quickly; my nephew, a tiny six year old, was dwarfed by the 8 year olds in his age group rendering him somewhat of a team mascot. I have followed their progress in person and on video and am amazed that despite the time improvements, countless laps, and supposed instruction, their technique is still deficient. I am not picking on them, though, as this phenomenon is seemingly widespread. Most of the kids I watched had terrible starts and turns and egregious flaws in their strokes, even discounting the kids who were obvious beginners. The fundamentals need constant work, but the rush to increase yardage or perhaps because there are too many kids in the pool, the task of perfecting stroke mechanics is relegated to the back burner until it is all but forgotten or it is too late.

How to Run Downhill

I raced the St. Croix triathlon for the first time in 1999. I started the run neck and neck with the legendary Karen Smyers. She pulled away on the first downhill and I was never able to bridge that gap and lost the race by 40 seconds. It wasn’t until after the 2000 Olympic Marathon trials, 10 months later that I took downhill running seriously, though. A masochist designed that painful course, with undulated hills comprising the last 16 miles leading to a downhill finish. My quads quivered, protesting with every step, until at last I crossed the finish line and lay down on a cot unable to move for an hour. The soreness lasted for days and I decided, with the St. Croix triathlon looming just 2 months away, to make downhill running part of my training.