Journal by Jeff Commings, Swimming World associate producer<\/i><\/p>\n
PHOENIX, Arizona, August 28. SWIMMING World<\/i> 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:<\/p>\n
Date: Sunday, August 28, 2011
\nTime: 11:30 a.m.
\nShort Course Yards
\n302 days to Trials<\/p>\n
2000 swim freestyle (time: 22:55, averaged 1:10 per 100, with :30 second break at 1000)<\/p>\n
16×50 on 1:00, 4 of each stroke: 2 drill\/2 swim<\/p>\n
8×25 on :45 — 15 meters fast<\/p>\n
100 IM fast (:58)<\/p>\n
200 easy<\/p>\n
100 IM fast (:57)<\/p>\n
300 easy<\/p>\n
I'm going to make a very long story short. On weekends, I am usually in Tucson. I don't usually swim on Saturdays. I swim on Sunday, and almost all the time I am swimming alone at the University of Arizona's Hillenbrand Aquatic Center. We teach swimming lessons at Hillenbrand on Sundays, so I wanted to come in early for a workout before the lesson.<\/p>\n
It's always a mental chore for me to stay focused through the entire workout I have pre-planned, and most of the time I can make it through an entire workout without talking myself out of a particualr set, or most of the workout.<\/p>\n
Today, I wanted to see how far I could swim before my mind went completely insane from boredom. I made a goal of 2000 yards before I dove in. I had to stop at 1000 to let out a gas bubble in my stomach that was making me nauseous. (I usually get these gas bubbles during distance freestyle sets.) Since I wasn't bored by the swim at that point, I decided to keep going. I was pretty happy with the pace I managed to hold. A pace of 1:10 is just a couple of seconds slower than my aerobic pace for freestyle, and given that I never looked at the clock, except during my halfway break and at the end, I was glad that I stayed on a good pace. It felt like I was slipping in my stroke in the last 500, because I was a little excited that the end was near. I was feeling pretty good at 2000, and I briefly considered swimming a little longer, but I decided against it.<\/p>\n
I took three heart rates at the end of the swim (28, 24, 22 for a 10-second count, with 30 seconds in between each). My heart was beating fine, but I was suddenly overcome with a feeling that I wanted to go home. I didn't want to do the 50s, mostly because I didn't want to do butterfly. I mentioned earlier that I usually do not change the workout, but today I changed the 50s. All 16 of them were supposed to be swim, but I did not feel like starting the set with butterfly swim after that long set.<\/p>\n
I changed the rest of the workout because my body was feeling a little lethargic. Instead of 8×100 IMs on 1:40, with Nos. 4 and 8 fast, I did two fast IMs with some easy swimming in between. Though my times on the IMs were good, I still don't feel like I'm ready for sprinting. The 15-meter sprints felt like an effort, and I didn't feel like my strokes had any snap on the IMs. I'm in no hurry; the sprinting will come. It's good to be working on my aerobic conditioning\/endurance for a while.<\/p>\n
I'm looking forward to my day off from the pool tomorrow, then kicking into gear again on Tuesday. See you then!<\/p>\n
Reprinted from Jeff's personal blog at commings.blogspot.com<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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