From Maintenance to Increased Performance

Some of my dear readers may remember a series of posts last year when I set out my commitment to swim training, as I prepared for the 2008 Duel at the Pool.  And, as part of my reporting, I noted my determination to keep on training even after the end of the outdoor swimming season at Kitsilano Pool.

Well .. I did keep swimming all winter long, at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, though not as regularly as I did last summer.  I swam regularly enough, however, to keep a basic level of swim fitness in place, but not regularly enough to avoid the dreaded addition of a 1/2 inch layer of blubber spread evenly around my upper torso 😉

However …  Kitsilano Pool opened this summer on May 18th and I have been in the lovely salt-water pool every day except one thus far, and I am already churning through a minimum of 15,000 metres per week (approximately 2,750 to 3,100 metres per session), and I am mixing it up in terms of long sets and intervals.

Yippee, the layer of blubber is disappearing pretty rapidly.

My objective is to move up to 20,000 metres per week by June 21st, and keep each 550-metre set under 9 minutes consistently.

Next, my goal for the 2009 Duel at the Pool (40 lengths of Kitsilano Pool non-stop) is to “lap” my friend Ean Jackson, the Mako Shark.  He maintains that all he has to do to beat me this year is shave his legs and swim 4 lengths of training by the end of August.

He never has beaten me yet … last year  the outcome was decisive, in 2007 the race did not happen due to the Vancouver Civic strike, and the previous year’s outcome (2006) was debatable, given his subterfuge through insisting the race be held 6 hours after I disembarked from a late-night transcontinental flight.  That year (2006) I won the short-course sprint, then took a break for a nap whilst he kept plodding along to the end, claiming victory … clearly a dubious achievement.

Anyway … the 2009 Duel at the Pool will be held August 19, 2009.  I’ll report on it here then.

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