Backstroke is My Friend

Journal by Jeff Commings, Swimming World associate producer

PHOENIX, Arizona, August 23. SWIMMING World associate producer Jeff Commings, who will be the second oldest man to compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials next summer, is journaling his daily training regimen on his personal blog. We are reprinting those articles here:

Date: Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Time: 5:45 a.m.
Short Course Meters
307 days to Trials

300 warmup: 150 free/50 back/50 breast/50 free

8×100 IM on 1:45 (odd: regular IM order, even: reverse IM order)

16×25 kick on :30, no freestyle kick and no board (all done breaststroke)

4x(3×75 on 1:20, #1 25 fly/25 back/25 breast, #2 25 back/25 breast/25 free, #3 stroke descend 1-4)
Swam backstroke on the stroke 75s: 1:05, 1:00, :55, :47

300 backstroke drill

16×50 on 1:00, 4 of each stroke descending by rounds (fastest times — fly: 32.1, back: 31.8, breast: 35.2, free: 29.2)

100 warm down

Total workout distance: 3600 meters

I had planned to do breaststroke on the stroke 75s descend, but I was feeling some tightness in my left hamstring, which was the muscle bothering me yesterday that caused me to skip part of workout to stretch. Not sure why that hamstring is tight, and it's still bothering me, even though I stretched for five minutes after workout.

When I'm getting back into shape, the only stroke that feels good is backstroke. Today it felt good, until I had to do the fastest 75 in the main set. Couldn't get the muscles firing just yet. In about a week, I should be able to do real sprinting!

As for the set of 50s at the end, since I knew I wasn't ready for all-out sprinting, I held pace on the strokes equivalent to my 200 IM pace. I was right on track, if you subtract two seconds from the fly for the start, for a 2:07 short course meters 200 IM. That's my goal for my shave meet this fall. I haven't officially picked that meet, but it's likely to be in mid-December at the pool I train at every day.

Reprinted from Jeff's personal blog at commings.blogspot.com

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