CSS, bringing out the child in me

I, like many people in their mid 20's am pretending to be an adult.  I spend time at work and university every day working and in the case of my job even sometimes successfully appearing like a functioning adult to the pupils in my care.  This however is far from the truth and like many competitive people and most children, if I can turn a job in to a game or a race, then it becomes a whole lot more appealing.  Enter CSS.

CSS stands for Critical Swim Speed and is a threshold swim speed, generally considered the maximum pace that could be held for a 1500m swim time trial.  Thankfully this is established through not a 1500m tt, but a 400m and 200m tt and using a calculator (available on the swim smooth website - see link at bottom) a figure is presented.

Tempo trainer pro - the boss of the session.  

These times allow very focused endurance based sessions, ideal for anyone swimming over 400m in event.  These session are something as an individual I feel have really brought on my swimming and as a coach can not recommend highly enough.  Sessions are differentiated based on this pace, however are predominantly based around the idea of shorter (100m - 500m) consistently paced threshold based efforts with shorter recoveries.

This pacing is controlled handily through the use of a tempo trainer pro as shown above.  This handy little gadget is, in my humble opinion the best value for money gadget I have bought in my entire sporting career (bold claim I know!).  This small reasonably inexpensive (~£32) turns many swim sessions
in to my childhood dream, everything becomes a game, that game being, how close can I get to the beep when I get to the end of each length.  It is unbelievable how quickly 120 lengths can tick by with this distraction.  The tempo trainer can be programmed to beer at regular intervals allowing for each length of a session to be consistently paced.  This also develops pace awareness, an essential skill come race season!

Red mist session overview on strava. 

My personal favorite session the Red Mist session, this set of 10 x 400m reps getting progressively faster through the session I feel has massively contributed to the falling of my CSS pace from 1:40 to 1:31 in the last three months (in theory a saving of 2:15 over 1500m!).  The premise of the session is:
4 x 400m @ CSS + 6 secs
3 x 400m @ CSS + 5 secs
2 x 400m @ CSS + 4 secs
1 x 100m @ CSS + 3 secs
Give this session a go and you very quickly realize where the Red Mist name comes from!  For those a little bit worried about 4k session distance, the Pink Mist is exactly the same session, however with 300m reps, ideal for the time crunched swimmer!

A huge variety of CSS sessions are available and I would highly recommend anyone looking at swimming distance to explore the options available with these sessions.  Anyway, I will leave that thought with you as I need to head to bed soon before a set of 20 x 100m @ CSS off 1 beep recoveries in the morning, it will be a fantastic game!

www.swimsmooth.com - a fantastic website with a huge quantity of information available for distance freestyle swimmers and the method of coaching adopted by BTF coaching framework.

20 is plenty, for now...

Sunday 13th March 2016 saw the 2nd running and my first attempt at the Brett Lydd 20 mile run.  The course was a simple out and back across the marsh with my Garmin clocking an incredible 0m of ascent over the 32km's (though I think I have been short changed here as I recon there was at least 10m of ascent).  Having had a week of fairly relaxed training in the build up (less a good hard 5 x 1km interval session on Wednesday night with the Weald Tri Club guys) I was feeling very ready to race.

I arrived a little later than planned and after registering, quickly bumping in to an old friend (who all credit to him managed a half marathon PB on the day, well done Tom!) and rushing off to get changed I cued in the usual pre-race facilities cue.  The one slight hitch was that being a little later than planned, I managed to complete my warm up from the cubicle to the start line, just in time to hear the gun!  Not exactly the calm collected jog, dynamic stretches and strides warm up I was hoping for.

Weaving through the crowds at the Lydd 20 miler

This also led to an unfortunate start at the very back requiring some serious weaving through crowds during the first 3k to find some space and people running at a similar pace.  Once I found some space my pace steadied and I settled in to the rhythm I was hoping to keep for the next 29km.  This managed to be the case for the next 17km with a steady pace, effort and heart rate keeping me ticking along, with 12km to go things started to get a little more challenging with a concerted effort required to keep my pace at around the 4.40/km I was hoping for.  At 6km to go things got tough and became dis-proportionately tougher km by km from then on, leading to a fairly desperate finish.  Overall I lost around a minute from my target pace within the last 6km, which was a little disappointing, however with 3 weeks worth of long running in my legs before the marathon I don't see this as tragic.

Things I learnt:

1.  You can get sunburn in Lydd in March, who'd have thought it!
   
2. My nutrition stratergy worked well, I used Nakd bars to provide energy for the first 22k, eating one bar every 5k, these felt like they worked well giving decent energy while not being too chewy, easily accessible and most importantly settling well in my stomache.  The last 10k was fueled using High 5 IsoGel's which having been used for all last season settled well in my stomach while being slightly less synthetic tasting than other brands.
   
3. Race belts are very useful!  The ability to have 500ml of water, all my Nakd bars and gels available when I needed them was very valuable.
   
4. Once I get past 15 miles things start to get tough, something I am going to have to really think about during my long runs over the next few weeks.  

Overall I was very happy with my performance, finishing in a time of 2:32:27.  This sets me on track for my London target and with a one more block of training left I am hoping for a reasonable performance on the day.  First though, lets get through a steadier few days of recovery spins and runs! 

Strava log for the Lydd 20: https://www.strava.com/activities/516064187

A testing week

View from Ditchling Beacon, 04.03.16

29th March 2016 provided a testing week for me in more than one way! My week was characterized by hard efforts in training and big efforts outside of training.

Tuesday saw the dreaded spring Wattbike test, a 20 best effort to give an idea of the one hour threshold power that is sustainable.  Having just completed a 10 minute test before I apprehensively set off know the pain that was due.  After 3 minutes it was confirmed exactly how much it hurt and after 20 minutes I came up with an average power of 246 watts, not the 250 I was hoping for but not a million miles off with a W/KG of 3.56 and an average heart rate of 187BPM.  All in all a good benchmark to set and something I can repeat come the autumn to see what level my riding has improved.

The majority of the rest of the working week was filled with university assignments and interviews for my teaching training starting (hopefully) in September.

Blue skies over Ditchling Beacon 04.03.16

Friday saw some of the best weather of the year so far and with my PGCE interview finishing early, it seemed rude not to head out on a trail run.  I had the pleasure of being able to run from the interview university straight on to the trail, up to Ditchling Beacon, east on the South Downs Way to Southease where I jumped on the train back to uni.

Lewes from the South Downs Way 04.03.16

 


As far as longer training runs for the London Marathon go I can't imagine it getting much better and I only hope conditions are as good in one months time for good friend of mine Kevin Draper to smash the South Downs Way 50 trail run!

With a steadier week next week, training will hopefully resume with normal service!





Strava log of the SDW run: https://www.strava.com/activities/508865399

Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon

Sunday 21st February 2016 saw the arrival of the start of my longer distance running events for the year, the Tunbridge Wells half marathon.   Those of you not familiar with the course, it is characterized by 10k undulating though steadily loosing height for the first half, a significant climb at almost exactly half way, then 10k gently undulating with a slightly downhill final 2k.

Sam and Megan fellow tri club members before the start.  

Along with two club mates, Sam and Megan (who was running her first half) I warmed up and set the virtual pacer on my watch for my target finish time of 1:35.00.  Having run at the event in 2014 with a time of 1:41.40 this seemed like a realistic estimate, on the optimistic side.  Having miles in my legs in preparation for the Virgin London Marathon at the end of April I hoped to put in a strong performance.

The race started well, finding space within the 2000 runners and a comfortable stride early on I focused on economy during the many small descents, know this 'time in the bank' would be required by Fordcome hill at the half way mark.

At this stage of the race sadly the wind was not in the favor of the runner with a consistent headwind making progress along the valley bottom to the base of the hill more challenging than anticipated.  I arrived at the base of the hill 90 seconds up on the virtual pacer, gel consumed and feeling good about the climb.  I found my climbing legs quickly and though challenging reached the top of the hill with 20 seconds in hand over my virtual pacer and safe in the knowledge it was just 9 gently undulating km's to go.  With 5k to go I was well up on time and feeling (figuratively)good so tried to keep the leg turnover up and gain as much time as I could, the last K was all downhill and I was happy to keep strong form and clock a 4.02 final km.

Overall my finish time was 1:32.50, 2.10 ahead of my target and over the moon!  Thank you to anyone who has helped with my training, particularly the Weald Tri Club coaches, its a pleasure being coached by you and training with the club.


ps, My Strava log of the event can be found here: https://www.strava.com/activities/498781018