Internal Mono(b)log

Of late I’ve been noticing that my swim workouts, while of the same duration as planned are covering less mileage (rather than the anticipated increases one would hope for). I attribute this to multiple factors, certainly fatigue plays a part, but also not really having any way to measure targets and guage my workout performance until I’m almost done the 90 or 120 minute workouts.

Well, that recently changed. I don’t, yet, have a measurement device other than my sportcount (which I love for it’s simplicity), but I have now added a FINIS Tempo Trainer to my arsenal of training tools.

In a nutshell, the tempo trainer is a waterproof metronome that you tuck into your swim cap, or attach to your goggle strap and it keeps the beat of when you should be stroking. Again it’s a very simplistic device, but it works so very well.

1st thing I noticed: my stroke is (was) very inconsistent. It’d spead up and slow down depending on whether I was breathing or not. The inconsistency caused the fast strokes to seem harder and the slow strokes easier. To me this seems generally inefficient, as I’d imagine moving at a consistent speed through the water to be the ideal.

2nd thing I’ve found: My slow pace is to swim with a tempo of about 54 bpm. Pushing that upto a tempo of just 56 bpm gets me close to tempo pace and tempo is probably in the 57,58 range. Clearly I want to speed up my turn overs. The tempo trainer will help me do this: now that I have it beeping out cadence for me, I can work on cranking it (slowly) up – while being careful to maintain good form in the stroke.

My only wish is that Finis would combine the tempo trainer and the swimp3. I love my swimp3. I’d likely have gone insane training in the pool without it. Combining these 2 devices would be such a boon!