by
Olivier Poirier-Leroy
The Australians have a long and rich history in the distance freestyle events.
Since the world record for the 1500m freestyle has been kept since 1908 six Australians have broken it a combined 13 times. Kieren Perkins assumed the distance mantle during the 1990’s, demolishing the world record three times, the final time swimming a 14:41.66 at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in my home pool here in Victoria, British Columbia.
Seven years later Grant Hackett would come along and drop over 7 seconds off that mark, swimming a 14:34.56 in 2001 at the FINA World Championships in Japan.
The year before I had the privilege of training with Grant for a few sessions in Vancouver, and it left me equally awed and disheartened. To see someone swim repeats of 200 meters of freestyle at a pace of 1:50-1:51 was a bit crushing, I won’t lie.
Anyways, the following workout was crafted by his long-time coach Denis Cotterell as a mid-season set. (As an interesting aside, Cotterell would also go on to train the man who would ultimately break Hackett’s world mark—China’s Sun Yang.)
The swim workout is a long one, running around two hours, and a sum of 7,400 meters, all done long course.
Have fun!
WARM-UP
PRE-SETS
8 x 150 Swim @2:15 as–
8 x 50 @1:00
THE MAIN SET
30 x 100 Freestyle swim @1:40
RECOVERY
2 rounds through–
DRILL WORK
(With fins.)
WARM-DOWN
Olivier Poirier-Leroy Olivier Poirier-Leroy is the founder of YourSwimLog.com. He is an author, former national level swimmer, two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, and swim coach.
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