Who likes IM?

As in Individual Medley, not Ironman. The workout of the week is going to be a main set that our swim team did almost a week ago. It is called the Ultimate IM set and I know the kids did not have fun doing it. The send off's can be changed around to fit any swimmer, but this is a long set so it shouldn't be performed by anyone who doesn't usually swim a large amount of yards. Or if you aren't really used to swimming a lot of IM. You don't want to mess up your shoulders because of the amount of Butterfly you must swim during this set.

And unfortunately, there isn't a video to post with this workout, but here is how the set is broken up (and I'll post the "B" intervals for the set):

4 x 400 IM alternating 5:45 and 5:30 send off's
8 x 200 IM all on a 2:55 send off
16 x 100 IM alternating 1:25 and 1:15 send off's

We had the 400's and 100's on alternating intervals. They would swim one at moderate pace and then one fast. The 200's were all on the same interval.

Out of the 20+ swimmers that started the set, only 3 finished the entire workout as planned without missing an interval. Most of the swimmers were forced to swim freestyle on the faster interval during the 100's. This only happened after they missed an interval.

And an update on the 100/100 challenge, I'm 9 for 9 right now. I have actually not missed a day of running so far and its going good. Most days I'm keeping it pretty easy with a shorter run of 30 - 45 minutes. I did do a longer run on Saturday and plan on doing another this weekend. I put in 40 miles last week and plan to be around 45 this week.

T-Bird

The Pushup Challenge and the 100 in 100

This is a little bit different from some of the past workouts that I've posted but its a good little off season challenge to try out. The main goal is to see how fast you can do 100 push ups. This challenge originated from this guy's friend (who is a girl) who said that she did 100 pushups in 2 minutes and 47 seconds. So, being the man that he is, he felt he should be able to do this easily if she could do it. And, he fails miserably almost doubling her time.

You can break it up however you want, you just have to finish 100 pushups as fast as possible.

http://www.flotrack.org/videos/coverage/view_video/235353-flotrack-2009-xc-season/201816-the-pushup-challenge

Here is the link to the guy who explains the challenge and shows his attempt at the challenge. I have never tried it because I'm too scared of how horribly sore I would be for the following days.

Monday I also started a running challenge that I have heard some people do over the winter to help them with motivation. Dave K wanted to do 100 runs in 100 days and for me to do it with him. So far, I have ran twice in 2 days so I am on pace, haha.

The rules:
a.) each run must be over 30 minutes to count.
b.) there can be multiple runs in a day as long as there is at least 2 hours between runs

That is pretty much it. Nothing too complicated. And I have started up my winter of swimming as well. I'm going to act more like a swimmer when I'm in the water and focus on some more distance swimming which I have never really done much of. Yesterday I did 3 x 1000 on a faster send off. This was extremely hard, and I died miserably on the last one, but it gives me some room for improvement if I decide to do this set again, ha.

That's about it for now.

Tony

WOW

Last week might have been the least exciting week of the year. I was taking some time off, and I filled that time I usually spend training by just sitting around. I was bored out of my mind. This week, my coaching schedule is in full swing. The kids are swimming 2-a-days, 3 days a week and have started swimming a workout on the weekend. So I went from working just around 15 hours a week to around 23 hours a week. So I don't feel too much like a bum anymore, haha. I have ran the past three days and have swam a little, but no serious training has begun yet. This past Saturday was a lot of fun with Ben and his girlfriend coming up for the game on Saturday. Those two and Casey and myself all went to the UK/Bama game, then to Mellow Mushroom, and then to the movies for a pretty exciting Saturday. Sunday, Casey and I were able to enjoy a little tennis, which neither of us had played in forever.

Now, the workout of the week is going to be from the Hansons-Brooks project. Brian Sell is running the Chicago Marathon this weekend (I think, ha) so I figured I could show a video of his training. He has been known to run 150+ miles weeks. He did not break 10 minutes for 2 miles in high school, but has since become an Olympian by making the 2008 US marathon team. They are doing 8 x 1k at just faster than marathon race pace. The coach talks about throwing the marathon guys on the track a few times just to keep a little speed in their legs. They did this workout 5 weeks before the Boston marathon. Enjoy

http://www.flotrack.org/videos/speaker/129-brian-sell/170131-hansons-brooks-workout-2009-boston-marathon-episode-12

Tony