Stroke rate | Strokes/50m | Time/50m | RPE | Comments |
46 | 34 | 49.3 | 1 | very slow |
49 | 37 | 46.8 | 2 | feels smoother but still slow |
52 | 36 | 44.2 | 2.5 | feels nice and easy |
55 | 39 | 44.1 | 3 | feels good |
58 | 39 | 43.6 | 3.5 | feels good |
61 | 40 | 40.5 | 4 | feels fast and easy to breath bilaterally |
64 | 42 | 40.7 | 5 | starting to work |
67 | 42 | 39.7 | 6 | working now |
70 | 43 | 38.6 | 7 | working but stroke feels good |
73 | 45 | 38.5 | 8 | stroke degrading; fighting the water |
76 | 45 | 36.7 | 8 | feels smoother again for some reason |
79 | 45 | 35.5 | 9 | sprint |
82 | 46 | 35.1 | 10 | sprint plus fighting the water |
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Sweet Spots
Today I did the Swim Smooth ramp test to discover my optimal stroke rates. It turned out that I have two sweet spots, i.e. two stroke rates at which I have the highest efficiency given pace and perceived effort. The first one lies at 61 strokes per minute and second one at 76 strokes per minute. What does that mean? At 61 strokes per minutes my pace clearly dropped by 3 seconds per 50 metres, compared to 58 strokes per minute, while maintaining approximately the same rate of perceived effort. This can be considered my long and steady pace stroke rate, which clearly supports what I have been doing during training. At a stroke rate of 76, I dropped 2 seconds per 50 metres compared to the preceding stroke rate of 73, an outcome which was absolutely new to me! However, swimming at this stroke rate is hard work. This stroke rate can be considered my CSS stroke rate. CSS stands for Critical Swim Speed and is an approximation of the lactate threshold speed. CSS can be calculated by doing a 400 and 200 metres time trail (see CSS link above). Over the last 6 months my CSS decreased from 1:32 to 1:28 and now to 1:25 minutes per 100 metres (as of last week). Looks like I am on the right track!
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