First and foremost, my new swim test is a simple 1000m TT, short course. I completed this in exactly 15:00, or, 1:30/100m. My first 100m was 1:26 and I held that little time gap up until about 700m. I hit 11:13 at 750m and dropped a little further off the pace, but in the last 100m I managed to climb back to that nice, round 15:00. HR tested after completion was 198 BPM. I have no direct comparison, but I do have times from other races this year. I've done 1:33/100m for 1000m long course at the UWO Splash and Dash, and 1:27/100m for 750m at the Queens Spring Fling. Both had enough of a gap between other events that I went all out, and both had competitors in other lanes which helps bring out your A-game. With a completely empty pool and only my brain to keep me motivated, I am satisfied with this time. I'm certainly no Phelps, but I've definitely improved a lot this year and seem to be holding on to those gains despite shifting my focus to overall triathlon fitness as of late.
Secondly, I believe I've briefly touched on this subject previously but would like to make it emphatically clear why I've changed my testing protocols, and why I chose now to do it. The next two paragraphs contain a large portion of boring personal details. I've underlined the main point I'm trying to get across. I won't be offended if you skip the fluff.
My understanding of the idea of specificity in training has been somewhat of a roller-coaster ride and perhaps you can identify with me on this. Early on when I first started in sports (and I'm talking baby-Adam) it made complete sense that if you want to be good at something, you have to practice that thing. I want to be good at kicking the ole' soccer ball? I'd best be kicking that soccer ball a lot. I want to be able to beat 3 of my friends at Super Smash Bros. at the same time? I best practice 3-1 matches. I want to beat my neighbour at running 1 lap of my block? I should be running around my block a lot more than him. However when I began taking training more seriously I was introduced to interval training, periodization, and many other fancy training methods. I loved reading about this stuff and would eat up every piece of writing I could get my hands on - perhaps way more than a young, driven, naive boy should have read. I think I was sucked in and overstimulated with ideas about training and began to hyper-focus on new-to-me concepts that seemed to really make sense. In particular, interval training just made sense. If you're stuck at 60 seconds for your 400m (I was an elementary school track-star!) but can only do 28-29 seconds for a 200m, then if you focus on lots of very fast 200m intervals, holding 30sec/200m will be no problem. I became obsessed with fast intervals all through high school to my own peril. I think there were only a handful of times through my entire high school career where I ran more than 9km in one day, or 40km in one week despite claiming to be a XC runner. I suffered from burn out, and hard, by grade 12, never having a truly successful year of racing.
Fast-forward to now. I've matured a lot, and completely changed my training. Yes, I still feel drawn to short, fast intervals but I've severely curbed my addiction to overspeed training. I consistently run long and slow, I worry about weekly volume, and I'm faster than I ever thought possible. I attribute the difference to a number of things, but the number one improvement is specificity of training. No longer do I focus on 200-400m intervals while eschewing the tempo runs and long, slow days. In fact, I may have done 3 or 4 workouts this year that included speed work like that. I've realized that the stress it provides is too great for the return on fitness in most cases, and the returns I do get may not be beneficial for my goal races. This year I will be making the jump from sprint to olympic distance triathlon. I will be increasing race duration from 1 hour to 2 hours. I will have to run after 1 hour of cycling, not just 30 minutes. My current 10km PB is 35:28, and my current 10km PB off the bike does not exist. Now, if I were to worry about anything running related, would it be that I don't have enough top-end speed this year, or that I need to work on my threshold and running strength to be able to run well off the bike? (It's the second one.)
Thesis: Think about what the goal of your training is and focus on the things that hold you back.
This relates to my choice of testing protocol throughout the year. In the early season, far out from races, I thought about my fitness, selected aspects of my fitness that I believed were holding me back or would allow for greater improvement this race season. In swimming I could hold a pace fairly close to my maximum 100m time for a good length of time, but that 100m time was pretty pathetic (1:27). Cycling, it was threshold endurance. In running... well, I pretty much just wanted to hit my peak fitness from last year at the same time as swimming and biking were hitting their peaks. If I can maintain that fitness and bring the other two events up I would be in a good place. So for swimming I knew the main energy pathway I would be using during an olympic race is that threshold area, that "comfortably un-comfortable" region you probably know and love. This means that the majority of my training should be targeted at improving my speed at that effort level. Specificity tells me I should train at that level to be better at that level. However, a whole year of focusing right at that level would suck a lot and in the long run probably not get me the results I would like. So in the base seasons I take one step back and take the same approach as before but rather than think about what is holding me back in my race, think what is holding me back in training at that level. Base is the perfect time to work on these supplementary skills and effort levels. So I recognized that technique was holding me back, and short, max speed fitness was holding me back. Therefore I allowed my training to target these things - I had my stroke analysed, worked on a lot of drills, and worked on bringing my 100m time down with short intervals. Now, during this phase as with any other, you had better find a way to measure your progress. Hopefully you can guess where this is going. If I'm training my short interval speed and my technique specifically, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a test set which tests my threshold fitness. I need one that focuses on short intervals and technique if possible.
With this in mind and a little help from my friend Theo, I designed the short test set described in an earlier post. 50m on 45 seconds, coming in at any time I'd like, until I can't make the pace time any more. I know, not a pure speed test set, but straddling the line between endurance and speed, with an emphasis on speed. I knew I was making progress because my results increased from 6 to 10 throughout the winter. Additionally, in workouts I noticed my 100m time dropping significantly... My 100m PB was once 1:27, but within a workout I've hit 1:17.
Fantastic. But now the Base period is over. Summer is upon us and I'm but a month and a bit out from my first important race. The focus has switched from training the supplemental skills that will allow me to train at the most important effort levels, to training those specific effort levels I will be using in a race. My swim focus has moved from a fast 100m to a fast 1500m swim split, so I am starting to train like it. But as I've said above, you have to be able to measure your progress (or lack thereof). And so alas! We arrive at the conclusion. :. QED. I care about my threshold speed, so I will test my threshold speed. 1000m TT. Very similar to a 1500m swim split, but toned down to reduce the stress and fatigue after doing it (I do these on my rest week, I ought to be resting). I am also switching my bike test to 30minutes max power outdoors, and my run test to a 5km TT.
Adam "Makes sense to me at least..." Fortais
