Our scheduled training week starts on Thursday, but my day off is Saturday. Currently Sunday is sea swimming, so Monday is my first day back in the pool. So right now I swim pool for 5 days straight, finishing the previous week’s schedule on Wednesday and immediately starting the next week’s schedule on Thursday .

Sound a bit complicated but it’s not really. Thanks to Coach Eilish, every day is accounted for. Very, very occasionaly there might be an extra day rest built into the schedule. There was one scheduled for Tuesday earlier this week after a very hard 10k on Monday. Not feeling too bad I decided to forego it and keep that day for another week when I might need it more. Of course this week also had some of Eilish’ torture sessions, as mentioned previously.

So by today, I’m fairly tired, as always by the end of the training week.

Today’s main set of about 9k included a set of 40 x 100m. The time was such that I’d expect a Rest Interval of about 10 seconds between each 100m. To get that each 100m was to be fairly fast, about 10 secs behind my fastest 100m.

Straight away I knew it would be tough. I was actually only coming in about 15 seconds behind my fastest 100m time, giving me a Rest Interval of only 5 to 7 secs.

I knew I could hold this, all things being equal, for maybe 20 of the 40 repeats, given that it’s Friday.

I held the interval for the first 10 repeats. Then took an extra 10 seconds break before starting the 2nd 10 x 100m repeats, again holding the interval.
After 20 repeats, I took an extra 20 seconds for a full 30 seconds break.
After 30 repeats, I took an extra 30 seconds for a full 40 seconds break.
I finished the 40x, holding the intervals, though 3 times in the last 10x repeats, the interval dropped to 2 seconds. The last two were tough but still on 5 secs.

And, of course, I also still another 3000 to do after that.

It was very tough set & session overall, coming as it did after 30k of swimming in the last 4 days. I’ve had both a 4 and a 3 hour session this week.
What it really demonstrated, (again) was the difference between Monday, when it would have been easier and quicker, and Friday, when the mind is as tired, if not more so, than the body.