Tuesday, January 19, 2010

3000 progression

another 3000 yd TT in the pool today. I did a 48:09. Here is how my 4 3000 TTs have gone:

12/3 51:23
12/9 50:55
12/31 48:41
1/19 49:09

Today's 3000 was very hard work for me. My three 1000 yd splits were: 15:55, 16:05, and 16:09. the first 1000 was relatively easy--call it a 5 or 6 on a 10 point RPE but the last was a 9+. Certainly worked harder than I would like to in a race. This works out to 1:36 per 100.

Using the standard human athletic performance degragation equation I can use today's TT to predict equivalent HIM and IM swim times (average time increases in a logarithmic relationship with the degragation exponent equal to 1.06--in other words if you double the distance the time slightly more than doubles....I'm not sure what my pool exponent is--I haven't tested for it yet--but 1.06 is probably pretty close and good enough for these purposes). These predicted splits turn out to be 33:12 (HIM) and 69:12 (IM).

These are within shouting distance of my PRs and in the race I'll have a wetsuit, frequently will be salt water, will be able to draft, will have tapered so potential to go faster than this even today. Of-course, currents, waves, cold-water, poor sighting, etc. could also cause me to be slower.

As I've mentioned before I'd like to do a 3000 TT in 45 minutes but based on today that might be tough--I really had to work it to do 48:09....still swim is looking good for 2010--at least at this point.

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