Take On The 2km Every Other Day Challenge

Here's a simple swim session that SS Head Coach Paul Newsome has started doing over in Perth, along with a number of other swimmers that we coach.

We call it The 2km Every Other Day Challenge - the idea is to swim 2000m every other day at an "enjoyable" pace to develop some steady state aerobic efficiency. If you’ve lost a little mojo lately, see if you can use this challenge to bring back a bit of pure enjoyment for the tranquility and simplicity of steady swimming performed with good pacing.

Ideally this session is done with a Finis Tempo Trainer Pro set to mode 2, as a pacing guide to refer to. Dial in the slowest pace per 100m you would be happy with even on a bad day - we suggest 6-8 seconds per 100m slower than your CSS pace. So if your CSS pace is 1:40 /100m, add 6 seconds to give 1:46 and enter that in the beeper so it beeps every 100m to you. You can swim to the beep or if you feel good get a little ahead of it, but don't go too hard, remember it's a steady paced swim.

If you own a Platysens Marlin you can set your target pace in the same way, plus the Marlin will record your swim so you can check your pacing (see some of Paul's Marlin data for this session below).

The first time you try this session you will doubtless go off too fast, dial back significantly and hopefully find your groove from about 700m in. Remember, it’s NOT a race, it's steady paced swimming like a long run or ride.

Here's Paul's times since he started the session on October 11th - you can see he's progressively getting quicker, getting further ahead of his beeper (set for him to 1:30/100m):

You can swim some harder training sessions in-between these 2km swims, for instance a CSS session or even a mighty Red Mist set. Not only do the 2km swims help develop that low level aerobic base but they also assist with recovery from the harder sessions.

For a bit more background, watch Paul's introduction to the session here:

youtu.be/zM6kzR98kCU

Here's his lap pace recorded by his Marlin during today's session:

Notice how consistent his pacing is without any especially fast (or slow) laps.

Also on his Guru Performance Profile we can see how steady paced this swim was (yellow line) versus his best times swum with his Marlin in all his training (green line):

Give it a go and let us know how you get on in the blog comments, or on social media using #2kmeveryotherday and #swimsmooth. We predict you'll be feeling the benefits after 6 sessions.

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