Race Night, SOM and Wooden Spoon

Results for Wednesday's race night are now up in all the right places. All the usual suspects were there, along with a few unusual ones. Out of the 14 swimmers racing 6 new records were set so that was a good effort. Four records went to the women and 2 to the men; also 4 records were for breaststroke, one for freestyle and one for backstroke. As a club we seem to be very good at breaststroke. I don't know why, I'm just making small talk.

Swimmer of the Month
This month it was awarded to Angela Oliver. Angela has really dedicated herself to her training and built up her fitness and her speed. She went to the North Island champs in Levin and swam a PB in every event, and absolutely walloped her 400IM PB in particular. This took a lot of dedication - great work Angela!

WS - aka Enthusiasm Award
The North Island champs gave a few opportunities to award the wooden spoon. In reality, this month it is more of an enthusiasm award. Just like Angela, Dave B was showing great dedication, this time in a relay. He was putting so much effort though that by a whisker he missed his turn. Fortunately, so did the IOT. We like your style Dave.

Why do we sometimes swim at easy pace?
If you find swimming at cruise (basic endurance) pace boring or difficult you are not alone. As athletes we tend to want to work hard and push ourselves. Not only that but our bodies are very good at tricking us into thinking we are working at an easier pace than we realise. In other words we are often putting in more effort than we think we are.

However, to make gains we need to work at a variety of paces and intensities, both lower and higher. I've been promising a venn diagram (remember those) for some time and finally produced it. It will nicely show the different benefits derived from the 3 main endurance training zones. If you are interested then head over to the Technical Tips page on this blog or be lazy (like me) and just click this link.

Benefits of Endurance Training (Venn Diagram)

I will post it on Facebook plus I've saved the diagram as a pdf if anyone wants me to send it to them.