It’s time trials this week and a great opportunity to get some data to help you plan and track your progress over the winter.  I’ve mentioned before that your swimming speed is the product of two key variables – your distance per stroke and your stroke rate.  What are your distance per stroke and stroke rate?  Mine were an average of 1.3m/stroke and 56 strokes per minute during the last time trial in February.

So why would I be interested in finding out what my distance per stroke and stroke rate are now?  Because I know that stroke rate and distance per stroke are affected by both my fitness and technique.  I know that my fitness is approximately the same as in March, and I am not planning to do much different over the Winter to change my fitness, but I do want to improve my technique.  I am adjusting both my kick and stroke symmetry after some self-analysis and feedback from Tim.

So this week is a perfect opportunity to see what affect the changes I am making are having at this early stage and I will use it to track over the Winter as I continue to work on my technique.  I am not interested in my time at this stage of the Winter – just the baseline variables of stroke rate and length – and will think about speed in the future time trials after Christmas.

So what will you learn from doing a time trial this week?  You have plenty of time to think about answers to that after Saturday but will only get that opportunity if you come along and swim it to generate the data!

See you Saturday!

Rob