Sunday, July 12, 2009

If You Felt Like Swimming a Mile...

Every now and then when you think about going to the pool you may consider "How far am I going to swim today?" And for some peculiar reason we often think in terms of how far we swim or the number of laps we carve out for ourselves.

In our sport of competitive swimming the "mile" is the term given to the 1650 freestyle. We have no idea how that came to pass since an actual mile is 1,760 yards. If there are any swim historians out there please illuminate us! At any rate a 1650 is 66 laps in a 25 yard pool and is often a distance swum in practice by competitive swimmers who race at that distance. You may have done so yourself - more than once; or you may have considered doing so but thought it would be boring or that you would lose count - or lose your mind doing something so repetitive.

For those of you who like things in neat packages we offer the following set we ran at Master's workout this morning. It is exactly 1650 yards long. The terminology "X" and "X - 1" refer to the number of strokes you take for one length of the pool. Have fun and let us know how it goes for you!

After a normal and suitable warm up swim here is the set. Take 20 seconds rest after every swim all the way through. When you are done swim an easy 300 and pat yourself on the back!

8 Rounds:
1x50 swim the 1st lap at X and the 2nd lap at X-1
1x25 swim at 85% effort at X

6 Rounds:
1x75 swim laps 1&2 at X then lap 3 at X-1
1x25 swim at 90% effort at X

4 Rounds:
1x100 swim 1st 50 at X then 2nd 50 at X-1
1x25 at 95% effort at X

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