Update on 2015/2016 training plan and progress so far

I'm doubling down this season and really striving to have it be my best (training) season since my first Masters season, the 2011/2012 one. During that season, I was getting in shape in the water again and losing weight. I was swimming 5 practices a week on average, and managed 7 a week during that winter, although I hit less during the fall and spring.

I went from weighing around 215 to 178 from October-April of that season, with the 178 being the weight I clocked when I hopped on the scale after doing the full shave for Nationals that spring.

Unfortunately, since then, I averaged about 2.5 practices a week during the '12/'13, '13/'14, and '14/'15 seasons, and it showed in two main ways: performance at meets and weight.

My meet performance has been all over the place. 2013 spring Nationals, my backstroke was lights out, my fly had regressed a bit from 2012 spring Nationals, and my IM was right there with 2012. 2014 summer Nationals was largely a disappointment, and 2015 spring Nationals was only a success in my breaststroke events and the 200 fly, and the latter was only a success because I set a pretty darn low bar for it. During in season meets, I've laid some real stinkers, but also a random smattering of good swims. I attribute that to low yardage and lack of time spent on training the strokes I want to focus on.

My weight has gone up and down in the 3.5 years since April 2012, with my weight at 2013 spring Nationals coming in at 187, my weight at 2014 summer Nationals (didn't do spring Nationals) coming in around 195, and my weight at 2015 spring Nationals right around 200. My weight peaked this summer/early fall at around 215. Over the last month, it has dropped to the 207-210 range (depending on how accurate my scale is--it varies a couple of pounds day to day).

My goal weight for April is 185-190. Unlike in 2012, I'm also doing dryland, so I expect I'll be putting on muscle mass which will counteract some of the weight loss.

Okay, all that aside, now that I'm two months into the season, here's my training plan. Unlike how I've set my training plan before the season in years past and failed miserably to actually execute on the plan, I've been making solid progress towards it for the past 3-4 weeks, and don't foresee any issues with it moving forward.

Weekly training plan

• Monday: 45-60 minute stroke focused evening solo practice if work permits
• Tuesday: 60 minute morning Masters practice, 45-60 minute stroke focused evening solo practice, (solo practice if work permit)
• Wednesday: 60 minute stroke focused evening solo practice
• Thursday: 60 minute morning Masters practice, 60 minute stroke focused evening solo practice, (solo practice if work permits)
• Friday: Rest day
• Saturday: 60 minute morning Masters practice
• Sunday: Rest day

So far I've been consistently doing the Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday portions of the training plan, and added in the Tuesday evening practice this week. That's a total of 5 practices a week. I plan to add in the Tuesday morning practice next week, which will put me up to 6 per week. Monday is probably going to be the iffiest practice to make, since I coach from 6:00-8:30 in the evening, and that really cuts it close as far as my potential work schedule goes. It'll be a stretch goal--if I can get my work schedule to permit it, it'll be a great additional practice that'll let me train for another stroke.

To date, I've been using my solo practices to do fly training, specifically focused on bulk fly yardage to get my endurance up. I've been doing a lot of fly yardage with fins on, specifically focused on approximate 200 pacing, underwater kicks off the wall, and distance per stroke. Besides doing general fly yardage, there have been three fly fin sets I've used as my target sets to see how I'm doing from practice to practice (I rotate through the sets, don't do them all every time I swim on my own):

Set #1

4 x 50 on 1:00, trying to hold 200 effort level/pace

3 x 100 on 2:00, trying to hold within 1 second of 50 pace

2 x 150 on 3:00, trying to hold within 2 seconds of 50 pace

1 x 200 on 4:00, trying to hold within 3 seconds of 50 pace

Set #2

6 times through

1 x 100 on 2:00, aiming for 200 effort level/pace

1 x 50 on 1:00, aiming for 3 seconds faster than pace on 100

Set #3

6 x 150 on 3:00, aiming for 200 effort level/pace

I've failed both times I've attempted Set #3 so far. The first time, I made it through number 5, then physically was unable to complete the last 150 without breaking stroke. I'd held a pretty consistent pace on the first 3, with the third one being about 5 seconds slower than the first one, then added about 5 seconds on number 4, about 10 seconds on number 5, and didn't make the last one.

The second time I failed was last night, when it was my third practice in 24 hours. I did the first 150 and was just so sluggish in the water that I knew I wouldn't be able to make it past the third 150, so I switched to doing Set #2, instead (only did 5 rounds, though, instead of 6)

I did pretty well on it! I went 1:05, 1:06, 1:06, 1:06, 1:06 on the 100s, and was :30, :31, :30, :29, :29 on the 50s. I've really been working on the underwaters and distance per stroke the past few weeks. Of course, when the fins come off, I'll have to work on it all over again, but building that muscle endurance base with fins works pretty well for me. Anyways, my 100s were consistently 5, 5, 5, and 6 strokes per lap, with 8, 8, 7, and 6 underwater kicks per wall. 

If I can get the DPS and underwaters to where I'd like them (no more than 7 strokes per lap, and at least 5 underwater kicks, all without fins), that should go a long ways towards getting me to the point where I no longer feel like I have an entire cargo train's load worth of pianos falling on my back on the last 50 of the 200 fly.

If I can maintain the practice schedule going forward, I intend to keep the solo Wednesday and Thursday practices fly focused, and rotate between back, breast, and fly on the Monday and Tuesday solo practices.

Pending my work schedule (tentatively start at the new job next week), I feel like the training plan is definitely achievable if I can keep my motivation up.

With all that said, here are my focus events this year, along with my recent best time (from spring 2013 through the most recent meet), goal time for this season, and stretch goal time for this season. I'm standing by the goal time, and have set stretch goal times in case my training goes even better than I expect and I blow the doors off in the spring. The bolded goal times are the events whose goal times are the Nationals cuts. The 400 IM is a stretch goal for me this season. I'm not going to do it in a meet till January or February. If it's a bad swim at that meet, I'm not going to go for it this season; if it's a good swim, I'll try to fit it into my training regimen, although I won't do it at Nationals.

Realistically, the 200 fly is my primary focus event this season. I'm not doing much backstroke training (at least compared to the lead up to the '13 spring Nationals when I went lights out in my backstroke events and spent that entire season almost solely training backstroke), so the backstroke goal times for this season are off my best times. I really like the breast events, but it's a matter of devoting time to training for them, time that will be taken away from my fly training. The IM training is primarily my training for the individual strokes and building up my aerobic base, not doing much specific IM training.

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Event	Recent Best Time	Goal Time	Stretch Goal Time
200 fly	2:28.71	2:19.30	2:15.00
100 fly	1:00.18	59.75	59.50
200 back	2:12.90	2:15.00	2:12.90
100 back	1:00.40	1:01.00	1:00.40
200 breast	2:43.20	2:40.00	2:38.50
100 breast	1:11.41	1:11.00	1:10.50
50 breast	32.07	32.00	31.75
200 IM	2:20.25	2:19.30	2:17.00
100 IM	1:01.56	1:01.16	1:01.00
400 IM*	5:09.40	4:59.93	4:55.00

I've got my work cut out for me!