T-30/T-20 Results from the Week of 09/21/09

The results from the T-30 and T-20 swims that we did on Tuesday September 22nd and Wednesday September 23rd are can be pulled from the CBD T-Swim Historical Results file on our website.

You can find general background on the set on the Team News page of our website and in our “Set of the Week” blog post on September 21st below.

Our top men and women finishers were:

T-30 (Long Course): Matt McNichols (2100m) and Kristen Commander (1900m)
T-30 (Short Course): Tim Carlson (2500yd) and Mariah Cunnick (2350yd)
T-20 (Long Course): Hans Yeates (1200m) and Stephanie Dumire (1150m)
T-20 (Short Course): Brent Clawson (1350yd) and Amber Hardin (1300yd)

The T-Swim is an excellent way of assessing your fitness level, speed, and technique. It will also give you information that you can use to make sure that you are training in the right intensity ranges in practice to get the intended results out of the sets. Some have asked how we’ll use the results of this set in our workouts. Here is how we’ll use the information going forward:

1) Pace — We’ll be referencing the 100 yard or meter pace, the “T-Pace,” in our swim practices going forward. You’ll want to work on swimming at this pace more effectively during the 8 week period between runs of the T-Swim. Let the practices tell you how much faster or slower than this pace you should go. You’ll work on swimming at this pace with greater efficiency and less effort. You’ll work on swimming faster than this pace when required, and slower than this pace when required. You’ll see in the workouts “T-Pace – 3” which means that you’ll swim 3 seconds faster than the T-Pace per 100. Because you’ll want to use this pace in your practices, it’s important for you to swim as far as you possibly can during your T-Swims.

2) Swim Golf Score, Stroke Count and Stroke Rate — The coaches captured these numbers for you during the last run of the swims. These number reflect how you swam the T-30 or T-20. You can work on swimming lower than this golf score in practice as a way of preparing yourself to swim the next T-swim with greater efficiency. We can plug the stroke rate into a tempo trainer. Finally, we can work on getting the stroke count number down through technique work.

3) Heart Rate — Many of you didn’t get your heart rates at the end of the T-Swims. This number is important because we can use it as a relative check from T-Swim to T-Swim on how hard you were working. The number should be somewhere around 180 or above. If you have a heart rate monitor, that will give the best estimate. Our estimate at 6 seconds is a good SWAG on the heart rate. If you don’t know how to take your heart rate on your neck just below your jawline, ask one of the coaches.

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