Friday, March 26, 2010

Base Building - Complete!



This week (week 6) represents the end of our base building period!! Now that I know what that means, I figured I'd give you a snapshot of what that has looked like for me, training wise.

Below is an average swim segment from the last couple weeks:300 yd Warm up

150 x 2 swim (don’t stop the entire 150 yds, no touching the bottom at all! Take a 25 second break in between the two sets.)


50 x 4 streamline kick (work on long arms, kicking from the hips, flexible ankles and alternate side breathing. 10 Seconds in between sets)


50 x 2 torso rolls (kicking on your side for 6 beats, then 3 strokes and 6 beats on your other side. Working on long body; hips, torso and head all facing the same direction; alternate side breathing. 10 second in between sets)


150 x 2 kick with board (face in the water, taking a stroke when you need to breath. Long arms, kicking from the hips, alternate side breathing. 40 seconds in between sets)


50 x 2 sprints (25 spring at 100%, 25 swim back at 75%. 25 seconds in between sets)


50 x 2 underwater (25 swim as far as you can underwater, then until you run out of breath then sprint remaining distance to the wall. Swim 25 back at 75%. 25 seconds in between sets)


250 cool down


Yardage = 1650 = 1 mile!


Biking is much harder to report on since distance and resistance isn't measured on our stationary bikes, but here it goes:

Warm-up on flat road

Jumps (3/4 turn resistance, getting up and down out of your saddle for the entirety of an average song at different intervals from 2-8 seconds)


1 Leg (pedal with only one leg, focusing on the full circle... pull up with your hamstrings as much as you are pushing down to complete a full and smooth rotation)


Hill (For the entirety of an average song, slowly add resistance till at the end you feel like you're peddling through peanut butter. For the next song, just as slowly, remove resistance and pick up cadence)


Fingertips (Peddling with heavy resistance, up out of your saddle, with only your fingertips lightly touching your handlebars to keep balance. The point of this drill is to hold yourself up with only your legs, prevent bouncing, and force yourself to focus on the entire peddle rotation. VERY HARD!)


Rolling Hill (This is similar to the previous Hill drill, but, as in the description, you are not only going up and then down, but rather continually adding and subtracting resistance for a longer period of time)


Jumps (refer to above)


Sprints (Every coach does these differently. My favorite are when you do 10 seconds of "hard", 10 seconds of "very hard", 10 seconds all out "sprint", and then 10 seconds recovery. You repeat this over and over for the entirety of an average song.)


All of this take approx. 45 minutes. This is very difficult to accomplish on your own. I would say to simply take a 45 minute spin class since most cover all of these basics, and will push you much harder then you could push yourself.

As for running, you can review the maps of each week's run in this week's earlier post. The maps include distance and topography.

So all in all, for my first 6 weeks, I did each of these once a week, and added one day of yoga and an extra run as homework. Hopefully this gives you a pretty good idea of what base building looks like. Now I have to get prepared to ramp it up for next week!

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