CHAMPIONSHIP FRAME OF MIND DURING DISTANCE SETS

Guest column by Chloe Sutton

MISSION VIEJO, California, April 26. MISSION Viejo has been known for its distance swimmers and challenging practices. With coaches like Bill Rose and Mark Schubert, the Nadadores have created some workouts that would make most people exhausted just by looking at them. Since I am a part of this program, I am tested day-in and day-out with these grueling training sessions and after I finish, the number 1 question I get is: "What do you think about for that long?!"

Today, I am going to share some of my "favorite" (or on bad days, "least favorite") workouts and what goes through my head as I'm completing these practices.

I'll start with today's workout. It was a total of 10,100 meters. The main set was:
2000 on 26:00
2x1000 on 12:30
4x500 on 6:15
6x200 on 2:40
8x100 on 1:15

The main idea of this set is to start out at a difficult pace, and then slowly get faster each section until you are at a full sprint on the 100s. I enjoyed this practice. It went by pretty quickly. You have to be strong at the beginning, and then be able to have the endurance and speed at the end. I usually try to think about sets in fractions. After the 2000, you're already one-fourth through the set!!! YAY! Then after the 1000s, you're half way! Party! I repeat "hold on!" and "keep going!" to myself as I start the trek down the second half of the set, because after you reach half way, it's all downhill from there! read more...