Hey Brenton here, before we start today’s episode, I just wanna let you know about the Hawaii swim camp that will be running from March 20th to 26th. This is open to all open water swimmers, triathletes and pool swimmers who are over the age of 18. And the trip or the camp is myself and former Olympic swim coach and swimmer Gary Haring. What we’re gonna be doing at the camp across five days is it’s all focused on helping you change the way you swim. And some of the highlights of the trip is going to be daily underwater filming and video analysis of your freestyle, personalized one-to-one coaching and feedback to improve your swimming. Morning sessions are working on technique. The afternoon sessions are there to help you implement those changes into your stroke. We’ll be staying 400 meters from the iconic Waikiki Beach and swimming at the Oahu Club at the outdoor pool there in Hawaii Kai. Also with one open water swim towards the end of the week,

which should be incredible over there. All of your accommodation, your airport transfers and transports included in the trip. And it’s only a small group of 12 swimmers that will be letting into the camp. So if you’re looking to improve your swimming and you wanna do that in the environment where it’s all completely catered to helping you become a better swimmer in a really small group, then come along, join us in Hawaii. It’s the perfect combination of relaxation, keeping fit and learning combined into one epic swim camp. So for more details, go to effortlesswim.com. Click on the clinics and camps link at the top and then you can find out more details about the Hawaii swim camp which is March 20th to 26th. All right, let’s get into the podcast. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is a friend of mine, Lysandra Cavallo and she was on episode number 91 which was recorded in August of 2017. And that was about how to swim the Rot Ness channel. And since then a lot has changed. After doing that podcast and talking with another person, I decided to enter the Rot Ness channel and you, I think you sold it to me, Lysandra, without actually selling it to me. You made it sound so hard but so much fun that I thought, yeah, that’s something I wanna do. And since then we’ve been training together, you know, doing a lot of sessions and kind of working towards this event which is in two and a half weeks. And it’s been a lot of fun. So I wanted to get you on the podcast again just to talk about what you’ve changed in your training, basically how we’ve been going the last couple of weeks. Just to, if anyone is listening who’s training for a 10K or more event,

just to give them some ideas around what we’ve been doing. A few mistakes that I know I’ve definitely made. And so they can learn from that and hopefully get some better results in any 10K plus races. So welcome again to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks Brenton. Thanks for having me. And yes, indeed, a lot has changed since August. Well, I’ve just brought up my training diet. I’ve just been keeping a spreadsheet of the training that I’ve been doing. And I think I started in October where I started off at 13K week and have just progressively built up where last week was 35K. This week should be around 40Ks. And I think in October when I first decided to do it I sort of made the call. A 10K swim scared the crap out of me. Like I’d never done one before. I knew if I trained, I could do it. But that was very daunting. And now I look at 10Ks and it’s just like, it’s nothing. Yeah, it’s amazing how your perspective changes as well.

And even during training, you know, when you stop and think, oh, I’m gonna be in the pool or in the sea for three hours, it’s a bit scary. But once you do it, perhaps little by little, it just mentally and physically as well, your body and just your mind just gets used to it. So yeah, I’m glad your perspective changed, Brenton. Yeah, so am I. Especially with the race not being too far away. He has to use hot wigs. And that’s an idea that I came across recently that I really like. It’s voluntary graduated exposure to things that you’re afraid of or things that you fear. So it’s putting yourself in situations where you gradually expose yourself to more difficult situations. And whether if you’re a beginner and you’re not comfortable in the open water, that might be swimming 100 meters in the ocean. And then, you know, you progressively build on it. And for me, that was, well, number one, the first thing I did in the first week

was a 3K time trial in the pool. When I was at Hell Week, I did that with two swimmers over there. Jade and Nathaniel and just that alone. All right, that was the first thing for me. And then I kind of gradually built up and what we’ve been doing on a Wednesday morning, for the most part, is going open water. And we’ve progressed from a 90 minute swim. Whereas, and yesterday, we worked up to a four hour swim, which was around 15, 16 Ks. And we were just talking about it earlier where it’s like, well, okay, that wasn’t actually that bad. Yeah, it was a little bit challenging. We got a little bit cold here and there. But I mean, it feels as hard as that first 3K time trial I did 16 weeks ago. Exactly, or the first two hour session as well. I think it’s just amazing how quickly the body adjusts to it as well. And once you’re in the zone, you know, even after when we did two hours and 20, you know, when we got over the highest point of the hill,

I just saw it as going downhill, you know, it’ll be really quick to four hours now.

Yeah, that’s right. It’s like, you know, we still had an hour 40 to go, you know, yesterday after getting two hours 20. But you look at that and go, okay, almost there, home stretch. Almost there, yeah, I can see the finish line from here. And one thing that I’ve really enjoyed too, and I think my fitness and how I’d be viewing this race would be very different. If I didn’t have a training partner, either working towards the same event or the same goal, or just someone to do the harder and the longer sets with, like if you weren’t doing it, I don’t know what I would have done for those long swims. I might have done them solo or found another group, but that’s been one thing that’s made it a lot of fun, which is really important, I think, especially when you’re training for such a challenging event. I agree, Brent, in the past, the last two years, maybe three, I trained with other people and other groups, but they swim at a different pace

and cycle and distance. So we just to have somebody there to do the whole thing with you, even though we barely talk, you know, we barely talk, we say good morning and goodbye.

But it just makes a huge difference just to have somebody there pushing you, you know, swimming side by side. It’s, it made a lot of difference for me as well this year because it’s the first time I have this as well. Yeah, and that, I was thinking about it yesterday when we were sort of starting out for the four hour swim was when we were swimming down from Blackrock to Sandy, like when I’m just swimming next year, I sort of look all right, she’s over there, she’s a meter, two meters away, and just to kind of make sure in the same vicinity. And it just takes my mind off the actual swimming. And it’s like that, yeah, just, it’s a bit of a distraction in a good way. And I was thinking, geez, there’s no way I would be doing anything like this if you weren’t there. I wouldn’t be up at six in the morning when it’s still dark. Luckily it’s not cold, that would make it even harder. But there’s no way I’d be doing

probably just four hour swim solo because it’s just, it’d be easy to pull the pin and go, I’ve done two hours and that’s fine. Yeah, that’s good enough. Yeah, when we did the two hour swims, both of us, we got pretty cold, it was still, it was still I think November, December, it was still a bit cold for us. And I think if you were in there, I think you’re shivering more than me, so I was kind of glad that you were there because I thought I’m not as cold as him. But I would have pulled the pin before because I was pretty cold as well. I think that was, it’s good to put yourself through that cold too. Like it’s not life-threatening cold where we’re questioning whether or not we’re gonna be able to keep swimming. It’s just that cold where you start to get a little bit tight. You start to, yeah, you start to really just kind of, the bottom lip starts to go and yeah. Sometimes my fingertips, they get really tingly on my toes as well.

I don’t think the blood is reaching those parts of my body, but you just sort of work through it. Yeah, and I think it’s good practice because I know a lot of people who say that they do get a little bit cold swimming rottenness. So it’s just good preparation for it. And we swam the rip last week, which is swimming from Point Napaian to Point Lonsdale, which is kind of the entrance to the bay at Melbourne for anyone that knows Melbourne. And it’s a very dangerous stretch of water with lots and lots of ships going in and out of the bay and also the tides, which can pick up to something like 15, 16 k an hour. So it can be a very treacherous, straight of water, but we did that as part of a race and a little bit of a competition. And that was, the water there, it’s a bit colder because it’s kind of at the entrance to the open sea instead of in the bay so it doesn’t warm up as much. And I mean, I didn’t really feel it at all last week.

No, no, not that I think we were a bit concerned. We talked about it, but once I jumped in the water, I thought, no, I’m fine. This is definitely, I can handle this, we’ve done worse. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I think that’s important to put yourself through colder or through tougher conditions than what you expect to face in the race.

Absolutely. If you can, if you have that available, like we do here in Victoria, sometimes we don’t even have a choice, you know? Yeah, that’s exactly right. It gets pretty, can be pretty cold and there’s no other way to do it. And I think that race as well. So the RIP swim, and this is a race that I’d, I think everyone who did the race last week that I’ve seen just through Facebook or whatever, they’ve just been saying how good it was, how much fun it was because it was such, for me it was such an adrenaline rush for the whole time I was in the water. I mean, it’s a little bit less than an hour, but I was basically on an adrenaline high for another hour afterwards because there was, so the first thing that happened, we both sort of came into this was the, I think, I don’t know if they got the communications 100%, but basically the spirit of Tasmania, which is this massive ferry that carries dozens of cars and people across from Melbourne to Tasmania,

that was leaving the docks in Melbourne and it was leaving for Tassie. And they basically got word that they had to gun it to make sure that they got in front of all the swimmers. And had it been, I reckon, 30 seconds, 60 seconds later, it would have been right now, Pa. But I mean, so I looked up, saw the spirit of Tassie when it was probably, I don’t know, 200 meters away off to my right and it was going right to left. And I looked up at the kayaker and said, what do I do? Do I keep swimming? And he goes, go that way. Okay, I’ll keep swimming then. And by the time it had just passed, I reckon I was about 30 meters away and the wake off this thing was massive. And then getting caught in the turbulence, like I just wasn’t going anywhere for a while. And my heart rate was just, was up really high after that. Same here. I think you could surf of some of the waves after that. It was so big. Yeah, it was really good. I also looked at the IRB next to me

and I saw it coming. And I said, that looks incredibly fast, but I’ll just keep swimming. And I actually stopped and the guys, I think the perspective with my head in the water and then the people either in the kayak or the IRBs, they just said, he just said, no, no, keep going, keep going. But I also, yeah, my heart rate and I just had such an adrenaline rush. I almost felt like waving for some reason.

People in the ferry, you know. I was looking up, trying to see if there’s anyone on the deck so anyone like looking out the window is at us. Cause I was thinking, does that have to be a cool view seeing all these swimmers swimming towards the boat and coming in pretty close proximity to it? Yeah, we’re probably on somebody’s Instagram or Facebook page right now. I wonder what the hashtag is. We’ll have to find it. We’ll have to find the hashtag crazy swimmers. Yeah, that’s right. And we should be hopefully getting some good photos or videos back from that. So the organizer Grant Seedly, he said he’s got some good shots. So if I get those back, I’ll put them on effortlesswrain.com under this post, under this podcast because yeah, they should look pretty cool. And the other thing that got my heart rate out was about a K to go. I looked down and the rip is up to 100 meters deep in some spots. And I have no idea how deep it was.

I couldn’t see the bottom, but I saw this really sort of, I saw this glimmer about 15 meters deep. And I saw it and then I kind of looked forward and thought, don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. You don’t want to know what it is. Cause it’s notorious. Well, it’s sort of notorious to being a sharky place out there. Even though, you know, no one’s been attacked or anything in a very long time. But yeah, I saw that and then I kept swimming. And then a minute later, I saw this barracuda about a meter or a meter and a half long. And I was like, okay, well that’s still kind of scary, but there’s much worse things it could be. So, but I still just really had to kind of keep my head in it because it was hard not to panic. It was hard not to just let the heart rate go up and then kind of, you know, lose control. That’s something else we need to practice as well, you know, cause our minds play tricks on us as well. You know, it could be, you know, just a cloud in the sky,

but you see under the water, you know, you see this shadow, but it’s just the reflection of the cloud. And then, you know, your heart rate will go up. So I think it’s important as well to learn how to, to deal with it. And sometimes you can’t control it, you know, but then, you know, your breath is a bit irregular. And then just learning how to control, how to go back to your regular breathing as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I had another, I think it was two, three weeks ago when we did the three, you know, three and a bit hour swim. My, the strap of my goggle, there was new goggles. So the strap of my goggle was sort of coming down and it was getting just in, was in my eyesight, just in my peripheral vision. And it looked like it was like a swimmer or a fish or a boat or something that just kept appearing. And I’m like, what is that? And I look up and there’s nothing there. And like it took me about. It’s on the other side.

Yeah, it took me two Ks to figure out what it was. And then I, yeah, and then I’m fine, but it’s just like, it kept giving, kept giving me a bit of a fright every time I would come in. Cause it’s like, I don’t know. It’s a UFO in the water or something. But it’s just, again, it’s one of those things where my heart rate was elevated. And I thought, okay, just relax. I’m sure it’s nothing. And then you realize what it is. And the answer is a lot more simple than what I thought. So yeah, that was exactly. It’s just taking the moment to try to figure it out, you know, to stay present. What is it? But on saying that, I’m glad I didn’t see your barracuda Brenton. I’m glad she just swam underneath you. Yeah, so am I. Cause they have some pretty sharp teeth. Yeah. One thing that I’ve found really useful that I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks is just getting a massage on a weekly basis, especially now when we’re starting

to do some pretty long sessions. So since we’ve been doing probably the two to two and a half hour sessions plus, I really need a massage to be able to just loosen up the shoulders and feel normal again. And that’s made a big difference in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, I’ve been doing the same. I’ve been doing the same maybe every 10 days. But I also have been getting a massage. I also get, I go to the osteo-physio and I just am like a puncture. This is cause I have a history of shoulder injury. So I just, I’m just trying to avoid it at any cost now. But the massage as well has been helping because if you want to swim the day, you know, keep swimming the day after or after a four hour session, 15K, 16Ks and you still have to train maybe not the day after. But two days, it really helps as well with the soreness and just sort of loosen up the muscles. Yeah, yeah. And the guy I’ve been seeing, he’s been brutal.

He used to be a policeman and policeman term massage therapist. But he just knows the right spots. He’s brutal. And for me, I just, that’s, I love that. I just love just getting, yeah. Just like getting really kind of beaten up on the table a bit because that’s the next day I’m a little bit sore. But in the end, I’ve found that very useful. Yeah. One thing I’ve also found in the last couple of weeks is I’ve lost a lot of my front end speed, my top end speed. Just don’t have the ability to sprint but that sprint speed just isn’t quite what it was when I was only doing two or three K sessions and with a sprint focus to it. So is that something that you found at all? Absolutely, absolutely.

We actually in training this morning, we had to do a session where we had to do 250 meters as in 20 meters fast, 30 meters, not easy but just more recovery. And I felt that it was almost the same speed for both. My recovery is just as fast as me trying to sprint as well. I definitely don’t have that sort of front end speed anymore.

It doesn’t really matter because in the 20K rate, we won’t really need that but you will, I think most people will lose that with the mileage that we’re doing. And one thing I have found though and something that I don’t reckon I’ve felt for almost 10 years since I have trained fairly seriously is I had a swimming competition that went over three days and this was like two weeks ago and just having that big aerobic base has, I did a few longer events, so the 400 free, 400 IM and then 200 IM, 200 free and it wasn’t until the last 50 that I’d felt like I’d actually warmed up for the 200s and in the 400, it wasn’t until the last really 100 or 150 where I could, again, I felt like I’d warmed up and just the ability that I had to be able to pick up the pace in the last 50 and 100 meters and come home really strong, I haven’t felt that for so, so long and it was just, I loved it. Like that used to be my thing that I could come home really strong

and over the top of people and I thought getting old now, I’ve lost it. Never gonna get down again. But just to be able to feel that again from having such a big aerobic base and I think getting the Ks back up to 20 plus a week for a number of months, that’s helped a lot but that feeling and the feeling where, and I kind of felt it in the rip race as well and I’ve felt it in some of the sessions that we’ve done is just the ability to sit at a pretty strong pace but not feel the fatigue from it and so my mind’s kind of, it feels like my mind is outside of my body, my body’s just doing it sing and I can just kind of control my pace and just be very calm and kind of zen like when I’m going at quite a solid pace. Yeah, same thing. I felt the same during the rip race. I felt that I was going at a pretty fast, strong pace but it’s still comfortable and that I didn’t feel myself slowing down at the end, I mean it was three and a half Ks

perhaps we swam a bit more because of the strong winds but still even in the last K I felt right, I can still work with the space, I can keep going and maybe have a 400 sprint at the end which is what normally happens when you see the finish line anyways but yeah, I felt exactly the same and I felt really strong at the rip race as well because of those long sessions. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been the same and I think the thing I found helpful too is doing a few races along the way so I know you’ve been racing most weekends doing some open water swims and we had Peter Pub which was about a month ago and that was a good hit out and then I had that swim comp and then we had the rip race and just kind of, I think being able to obviously practice the racing and the skills and everything but just having something there to kind of challenge you and test things out and we also did the Williams Townsend which was a 10K kind of qualifier for Rotto

and I’m so glad I did that because the whole race was just terrible.

Conditions were pretty rough as well. Yeah, conditions were really tough actually probably some of the toughest I’ve raced in. I agree. And like that, so going into that I hadn’t done a 10K before only like a 10K training swim but I bought a new, I bought a TYR race suit with open water race suit probably a size or two too small and pulled that up. Yeah, when you put a wetsuit on you want to give yourself some space in the shoulders so you pull up the waist quite high and give yourself that room in the shoulders and I didn’t do a warm up because it was a 10K swim and I kind of just wanted to get through it and I pulled up the waist area way too high where it was very uncomfortable in two and a half hours and nothing I could do could fix it because that race suit’s the tightest thing I’ve ever put myself into plus it was probably a size too small and yeah, I was just in absolute pain. It didn’t change at all just because of the swim

there were other things in your mind as well, Brenton. Oh yeah, and it was and then hopefully no one’s kind of eating dinner or breakfast when they listen to this but like and then I had TYR, ate out TYR the night before which did not agree with me the next day.

So those two things plus I bought new goggles and this strap snapped that morning so I had to just wear my old goggles which fogged up so I couldn’t see where I was going for most of it so like it’s just that was it was the best race and the worst race at the same time I learned so much and I know- You learned so much exactly, exactly. New goggles, this is for a woman is just like wearing high heel shoes, brand new high heel shoes for a wedding. You just don’t do that, brand new goggles, you try once or twice in the pool before even if you always wear the goggles, same brand, same everything. Sometimes you just have to wear a couple of times before wear it in before you bring it out at the race. Yeah, you do. And I did pretty much everything I tell my swimmers not to and it’s, yeah. We get comfortable with our habits as well. You know, we think, I can’t go around same goggles, I’ve had Thai Curry so many times and I don’t know, we just get comfortable.

We think it’s not gonna happen to us but I don’t know sometimes we just have to be careful. Yeah, that’s- Decisions. So maybe no Thai Curry for you before I run this camp. Definitely not, no way. Not when it’s twice the distance as well. And I’ve also found that I’ve had a lot of up and down weeks. So for example, probably the,

well, best week of training, there’s been quite a few good ones and I think towards the end of last year I was doing some really, I was swimming really quickly doing some good sets and I haven’t quite been able to get back at that pace or speed yet. I think because of the extra volume I just don’t have the time to recover but I said I’ve been, I was doing pretty regularly was 10-4s on 5-30 and kind of going for moderate, three a bit quicker, too faster and the last one really going for it. And I got, yeah, I got down to all of them, got being under five minutes which I hadn’t been ever before. So I was swimming really, really well and then I think a week or two later after that I just, I couldn’t get my head right. I felt like crap, this was a week before Peer to Pub and I was considering pulling out a Peer to Pub because I just wasn’t feeling it and I just had to tell myself not, just get on with it. It’s one of those weeks where it always happens

especially after a few good weeks, it’s that roller coaster and you’ve just got to ride the wave and I’m glad I did because I had a good summit at Peer to Pub and got my confidence back up and then since then each week has been pretty solid but have you found yourself in any up and downs with your time? Absolutely, I think this week at the beginning of the week I felt myself in one of those downs, I was trying to do 400s at a pace that I do comfortably and I just could not find the speed and before that as well, maybe also just before the Peer to Pub. So for some reason, it just fluctuates. Hopefully I feel more ups than downs but you just got to work through the downs as well and you just got to stick through it and keep racing as well.

There was one race and I just got up and I didn’t really want to do it but I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I ended up swimming well but all driving normally an hour and a half and I was just still debating whether or not I should do it, still questioning and doubting myself but it’s all part of it and you just have to challenge yourself and those feelings as well. It’s so normal to feel that and to date yourself and I was speaking to someone who came to Hell Week in October and she’s trying for a 40K swim and we just had a chat over the phone and the week before she was just in a really negative headspace. She was kind of doubting herself. She’s done all this work towards it and she’s swimming well and she did six hour qualifying. Well not qualifying swim but a six hour swim in the pool and yeah and same thing she just was in one of those down weeks, wanted to chat about it and so I spoke to her the week after when she had had a kind of good result,

a good swim, she was back on top. Sometimes it can help just to have someone there to just kind of talk through how you’re feeling and just kind of remind yourself of why you’re actually doing this because when you’re in the thick of things it can be very easy to forget that and you kind of go, what’s the point? It gets very cloudy, yeah, in the mines, yeah, when you’re in the dark space sometimes. And especially when you’re tied, it’s so easy to fall into that negative headspace when you’ve had only a couple of hours of sleep and you might have a lot of work to do, you know, you’ve got to train it’s some, that’s, and we were talking about this last week is last week we did 13Ks in the pool and it absolutely wiped me out. I had a nap that afternoon, I had three naps the next day plus a massage and then yesterday after our four hour swim, I, so we swam early, six till 10 a.m., I think I, what did I do then? Then I pretty much went straight to a massage back home

which is at one, got home, had a nap and then it was time to go coaching for an hour and I didn’t get any work done but I just thought that that’s all right, fair enough, you know, that’s, you’re not gonna be able to do that every, all the time. But you know, I wouldn’t have been able to get much, much work done there and you know, you just got to accept it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cause sometimes one week everything is going so well when you’re feeling good and you didn’t do, you don’t do anything different and then the following, so it’s hard to understand why, you know, the week after and things change, you know, and sometimes it’s hard to understand but I’m same thing, I was really amazed. I was actually scared of how we were good, not scared but you know, it’s, if those 13Ks in the pool that, you know, it hurt a lot, four hours, you know, I’m gonna feel even worse but it was completely the opposite, you know?

I felt much better yesterday and I feel fine today as well. So, I don’t know, sometimes the body reacts differently than what we expect. Yeah, and one thing that I like that we’ve done is doing those long swims in good conditions. We’ve kind of got, you know, we kind of worked for ourselves a bit so we’ve got the flexibility to be able to do that somewhat but like we know how to swim well when it’s choppy and rough conditions, like we’re fine in that. So there’s no real need to kind of practice it too much and what I’ve really enjoyed and looked forward to each week is those open water swims when it’s been a nice day, it’s been light winds and clear water, like it’s just that to me, that’s a lot of fun and that’s, I get a lot of enjoyment from it and I’ve been looking forward to it as opposed to kind of dreading, oh crap, we’ve got our four hour swim coming up or it’s been the opposite. Yeah, and this is a achievement after, you know,

the, I think the endorphins and a bit of the adrenaline, it just, it’s just such a buzz afterwards, you know, and the feeling of accomplishment. So, it all counts, you know, it makes it worth it, absolutely. Yeah, and what’s made it easy to kind of get through that as well is just breaking it up with the feeds and figuring out what nutrition and what you can stomach in terms of any gels or food that you’re having. And so yesterday we broke it up into, I kind of varied a little bit with what we were doing, but it was roughly sort of every 30 minutes, every 40 minutes we were stopping for food and I feel like I’ve got my nutrition pretty much dulled in now and you’ve obviously done a lot of these swims so you know what you’re eating, but just breaking it up that way and going, oh, we’ll just get to the next K or the next two Ks, have a feed and then just approach it that way, break it down into small chunks and it doesn’t seem like that much, it goes very quickly.

Yeah, and then instantly after the feed, you know, I think the body just absorbs everything so quickly and it’s a good feeling as well. Just look forward to the feeds.

I think now one thing I changed having more gels or more coconut water, I realized I can stomach more than I thought I could

and that gives me an extra long lasting energy as well. So this definitely is different from my previous years. So I think maybe I’d rather have more than less now because I was scared of getting sick so maybe I was starving my body a bit, but now I feel like I have more in the tank actually. It was our friend, Mitch, that actually told me to try this, try doing this differently and it worked for me. I’m happy I’m doing it right now. Yeah, and I mean, we got through yesterday pretty well with feeding probably more regularly than we were earlier. Yes. Yeah, and I reckon that’s probably a contributing factor. Apart from the, as I was laughing before, was the two different types of coconut water from the same brand. So one was just normal coconut water, that was fine and then one was a coffee and so yeah, coffee and coconut water, but it was like a fizzy, it didn’t say it was fizzy on there, but it was fizzy coconut water and this coffee thing.

And I had a sip and almost threw up and then I said, can I have try this? I pinched the bed, I thought you were just being exaggerating and then I tried it. It was disgusting. So yeah, as long as you don’t buy the coffee and coconut water, mix that, you’ll be, yeah, you can drink as much as you want. You’ll find. Yeah, that’s right. And one of the gels I had yesterday was Ham and Nutrition and it was hazelnut chocolate flavor or something, but oh man, it was like Nutella. So I think that’s gonna be my go-to right next. I look forward to every feed. Yeah, I thought you were gonna eat the packet as well. It wasn’t that bad, was I? Yeah. No, you saw it in my eyes. I was, yeah. Yeah, I saw it in your eyes. I thought it was actually jealous, to be honest. Next time, I’ll just take that from you. Yeah, I didn’t share them yesterday. Sorry, I was, yeah, once I realized how good they were, I didn’t offer any. Sorry.

The other thing that I’ve found useful is test sets or having, doing similar sets every week, every second week, just to sort of compare how you’re going from the week before or two weeks before and just having some way of kind of measuring your progression. And as we said, you know, you’re not gonna do well every week, but over the course of say four months or five months, you actually get to see that you are improving. You get to see the improvements in speed. What are some of your go-to sets that you’ve done? 10, 400s, it’s also a good one that I do.

And I think my staple set is the 10, 400s, more or less on a 545 as well. And then let’s just try to keep the same cycle, just keep the same speed. And obviously, if I have a bit of fuel at the tank at the last two, then I’ll try to push it harder. But the 10, 400s for me is my go-to set to a small warmup and then just get straight into it. Yeah, I like it. It’s just an easy way to do 4K. It goes very quickly. And yeah, it’s a good one to do. And one thing that I’ve done a lot in this, in preparation for Rotto, compared to training for other things, I guess I haven’t really needed to because it’s always been shorter stuff that I’ve done. And I’ve always done a lot more kind of variable pace stuff or sort of threshold swimming. But I’ve done a lot more sort of sustained endurance. So kind of swimming a little bit easier but doing that over a longer period of time. And like it was one training session I did was,

I think it was a 10K set where it was 500 warmup and then 3x3K in a short course pool, which was boring as hell. But I did it in the end and pretty much held, I can’t remember the time that I swim but it was like, yeah, within about 15 seconds of each other for each of the 3Ks. And it was just kind of watching the clock, making sure I was holding the same pace and getting comfortable doing that. And I found that really helpful for building that, the aerobic base and knowing and having the confidence that I can do that over 20Ks. So that sustained pace stuff has been really beneficial. No, I agree. I haven’t been that brave to do that in the pool or 25 meters pool. I haven’t done it since. I’m not that brave, don’t I? I realize it was a stupid idea afterwards. I’ve done a few sets in the pool up to 10Ks or sometimes I will just double up to 5Ks in the morning and 5Ks in the afternoon. But still doing, I mean, sometimes it is boring,

doing 5K sets of one kilometer and doing that twice.

But at the same time, it wants to do, if you’re accomplished and it gives you a good base. You know, you’re just doing it to give you the good base that you know, I’m always gonna be doing that set. So yeah, I just have to chew through that sometimes. And we find some pretty interesting and amazing ways to break up a set. Like I’m glad I could draw in all of my coaching experience over the last 12 years to break up the 13K swim last week down to, what was it? 3K to 1500s, three ones, six fives. And those six fives had 50 back at the end because we wanted to treat ourselves. So it was, yeah, it took all of my coaching experience to be able to work that one out. And… I thought it was genius actually. I thought it was a really good way. Oh, thanks. So you thought, yeah, Diz, I’m glad Brent’s here because you know, how would I do it? I actually had a sadding mind. I never told you what it was. Oh, it was a… I think it was a 1200, yeah.

1200, 1800, 600, 400. And I think two. And then we, I think, hold on, two.

It works up to four Ks, but three times through that. Whoa.

The three times through is what kills, isn’t it? But I thought when I heard you said, I thought, no, no, we’ll go with that. Yeah, once you’re through the three and the two 1500s, it’s, those Ks actually feel short. Those three one Ks feel like they’re not that much. It goes way quickly as well. And that was a good sustained pace set actually because we were kind of watching our time throughout all of them. And it was, I think we started off, I would have started off around two, averaging one 22 to one 23. And I think you might’ve been maybe, I don’t know, a second or two slower than that. So like very similar. And then I think we blew out, I don’t know, three or four seconds per hundred towards the middle at the slowest point. And then we kind of brought it back and got back pretty much to that same pace or at the start. So it’s not bad, a sort of three or four second variance across 13 Ks. It’s a good market to kind of see how you’re tracking

and how that will go across a 20 K swim. Yeah, absolutely. I think, I don’t know, the blowout is important as well. And then being able to dig out of that.

When you see most of the work is done as well, I think you naturally feel lighter. And I don’t know, when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, I felt better for some reason. I felt better when we finished and in the middle of the set as well. I could feel the three, four seconds.

I think I blew out at three, one thousand. But yeah, there was one of them I really struggled. But then all of us, after that, I just pulled my neck in and yeah, picked up the pace. Yeah, and it’s good to know you can come back from that. And the other thing as well that’s important is that even when you feel like you’re going a lot slower, like that, the 125, 26 felt 10 seconds slower per 100 than three or four. Absolutely, absolutely. But if you just stick with it throughout the race year, it’s not that much different. So you’ve just got to persist and obviously get your feeds right and hopefully you can come back, get a second wind and maybe a third wind at the end of the race. But your day’s not over if you start to fatigue a little bit. Yeah, I just rolled down on that. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. What I want to try and all that I’ve been thinking about now is after training for a big event, I experienced this with Ironman.

I experienced this when I was training for national age back in the day. It was you’d have so much focus on one particular event and you’d put so much into it that I kind of got a little bit of sort of post-race or post-challenge depression. Whereas, you get that low where you’re like, okay, I’m just kind of not doing anything here. I haven’t got a big goal to work towards. And I think sometimes it can be very hard to avoid that lull there. But I’m thinking what I’ve liked the most has been really those longer swims where your mind just really clears, your body’s completely buggered and you get to bed that night and you just sink into the sheets. It’s like it’s just, and you kind of go to the point where you really have to push yourself to get through it. I think if I can do that at least once a week after Roto, whether it’s in running or cycling or swimming, just in some way, that’s going to kind of keep me a little more sane

than if I’d stop completely. Completely. Yeah, absolutely.

I think, I mean, you’ve done a few big events, but I think I feel that after Roto especially, sometimes when we have the Masters Nationals here, it’s too close together with Ronis. And I like doing my butterfly in the pool as well, but sometimes there’s not enough time to rest, to recover from the 20K to 200 butterflies. So I just sort of lose focus for a few months and definitely either, I don’t know, either cycling. I think Renata will be happy about this, but any doing something that, just like you said,

just take your mind off it and you’re not numb, but you’re sort of in the zone for a couple of hours. That definitely helps the post-race, post-big event depression. Yeah, yeah, go to, especially for, I know you’ve been an athlete in a summer all of your life. And yeah, I think when I’m, when I actually coach the best, when I work the best is when I’m challenged and working towards something. And it’s like the saying goes, if you want something done, give it to a busy person because they’re probably much better being effective with their work and time management than someone who’s lazy. And I feel like when I’m kind of in the mode right now, generally I’m firing on all cylinders, sports-wise and coaching-wise and everything. It’s all just going really, really well. So yeah, while it is good to have downtime, yeah, I’ve been thinking about what that next thing’s going to be that will sort of keep me at this somewhat level.

Yeah, I mean, this is probably the highest level training that I can do with the hours. This is definitely the, I don’t know, the amount of time that I invest. But at the same time, my work, the same thing, my work is going well. I feel productive. I feel, I have this certain amount of time to allocate for certain aspects in my life. Obviously you’re a father, but for me, you know, for my social events as well, you know, you just want to get out and see people and see your friends and you want to have time, you know, your relationship for that as well. So it’s important not just focusing solely on that,

but you know, keeping your other aspects in life at bay as well. Yeah, that’s true. You’ve got to have a very understanding other half. Yeah, like my wife, she’s been really good. Like it takes me an hour and a half to get down to swimming in the mornings when we go open water. And then my mother-in-law looks after our kid and all this sort of stuff. So there’s a lot of coordination and help on from other people that goes into it. So I think kind of appreciating that and having someone who understands that and is happy to help you that makes things a lot easier because I don’t know, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I don’t think if it wasn’t like that. So. Yeah, absolutely. I think I agree with my boyfriend as well. Sometimes I’m just, I’m just buggered and I don’t want to do much, you know? Sometimes I just don’t want to be out and about and to have somebody that is there and understanding, I don’t know. It’s been really helpful for me as well.

I don’t know, sometimes, you know, you feel that you have to do things for the other person as well to make up for the lack of time. But, you know, if you have somebody there that’s just understanding, it makes training a lot easier. Yeah, absolutely. And it is nice to share it too with, you know, to kind of be able to just kind of debrief a bit on the training that you’re doing. And, you know, like I got home yesterday and I was pretty proud of the fact that we’d swum for four hours because that’s the most I’d ever swum for. And it is nice to just go, I’d say, you know, this is what we did and say it with a bit of pride and just be able to share it. I like that as well because, yeah, it can be. And if you, like I, very hard to train with a squad out where I am at the moment. And so it’s just, it’s good to be able to kind of share that with you as a training partner and then kind of share that with my wife and everything like that.

So it’s, it is good to have some sort of support team around you and not having a squad to swim with very often. It’s good to have that. Yeah, and then try to keep the, I mean, I’m not a big winger, but it’s just, I try to winch too much because some days, you know, you just, it’s just grabbing a glass of water, you know, hurts and your shoulder hurts. And I think, yeah, I’m very mindful, you know, I don’t want to hear somebody winging and whining all the time. So I just, I just try not to, especially, you know, around my partner. I’m glad, oh God, no, no, it’s coming out. I have a cat, so I can do it to her. It’s a great thing.

Yeah, that’s the way to do it. When I was coaching squad for seven or eight years that I was just, I was getting next to no sleep and I was just, I was tired all the time. And that’s all I’d say to Em would just be, oh my God, I’m so tired. And she heard that for eight years. And now I’ve finally learned to not say that or at least try and limit how much I say it. And she’s, yeah, it’s important. Yeah, that’s like no one wants to hear that. So I try and just, yeah, keep that, keep that up. I just think those things and suck it up basically. And finally, I’m going to use it for the most part. I know, right? You used to finish late and then come back to this squad quite early in the morning and you had to do a fair bit of driving as well. So it wasn’t easy. I give you this. No, I do, I do miss giving, I do miss coaching the squad though. It was, it was just, I really enjoyed, especially when you get a good group of people there,

like on a Saturday morning when we had 30, you know, at times up to 35 people across three lanes in the outdoor 50 and, you know, middle of summer to cracking morning and everyone’s there. And, you know, working through a hard set and getting times and everyone’s pushing themselves. It was just, that’s a real, that’s a real sort of high for me. I really enjoy that. And I get that a bit at how weak when we’re running sessions there, which is, which is awesome. And yeah, that’s, that’s probably the thing I miss most about coaching a squad because it’s, yeah, when you, as a coach, when you’re there on the, on the side of the pool and everyone’s firing and you’re going through a challenging set and everyone’s willing to commit, it’s, yeah, there’s no better feeling than that. It’s the feeling, yeah. So, yeah, I can’t even mention that. I think, you know, not just with swimming and training but all aspects of life, you know,

if we find the one thing that, you know, makes our heartbeat or, you know, gives us an extra lift cause I don’t know, sometimes the work can be a bit repetitive and not boring, but just a bit repetitive. But, you know, if we find the one zone that, you know, gives us an extra lift and it’s important to have that. I think to give us an extra twinkle in life.

And yeah, no, I found that with,

where was I, I was running clinics up in Noosa and I trained at Kawana Pool there with, with one of the squads, the guy, Toby Kutter, jumped in his Monday morning squad. And geez, it was so much fun. Like it was, I don’t know, it was four or five K but a good hit out with a couple of 200s and hundreds where you sort of built up the pace. And I haven’t had that for a really long time, but just even little things like that, where I, I get a real, real buzz from it. And it’s just, yeah, it was a lot of, lot of fun. And I get the same thing from, from surfing, going down the beach when it’s a really good day and there’s some good waves about. It’s like a little bit of that, you know, once, once a week or so, it’s, that’s, it’s just that reminder where it’s that don’t forget to play, don’t forget to have fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I find mine in, in just hiking, you know, going to the national parks and just doing sort of,

sometimes challenging, sometimes not so challenging hikes. So I really enjoy doing that with, with my boyfriend. But yeah, just finding the time to play is actually very important. Yeah, totally, totally agree. We’ll leave it there. What we’ll do is after Rotnest, we’ll record another podcast. We’ll talk about what went well and hopefully the very few things that didn’t go well. And yeah, and just have a debrief on the, the race and hopefully give the, the listener something to take out of it. Do you want to have a lift to go? I know, not long at all. Not at all. It’s almost taper time. So I’m going to start backing off a little bit next week. I think probably get back down to 25 or 30Ks next week and then 20 the week before or so. Yeah. But it’s, man, it’s almost time to, almost time to race and it’s been, it’s actually come up, I always say this, but it’s always come up, you know, very quickly in the last two or three weeks

that always happens. But looking back at my training diet, it’s been nearly, this is week 15 of proper training for Rotnest. And it, I don’t know where the time goes. Yeah. Cause we have our heads in the water. Yeah. That’s right. So a lot of, a lot of hours in there with your head in the water. But that’s where the time goes. Yeah. Which is, which is a good thing. So I’m, I’m actually looking forward to debriefing and doing this after the race. You’ll be really good. I just, I just want to see all the things I learn, what I feel, what’s going to be different this time. I’m looking forward to it. Well, I’ve enjoyed just this chat and kind of going through the things that we’ve been through. Cause it makes me appreciate all of the hard work that we’ve put in so far. And I’m quite grateful of number one, being able to train together and work towards this together and just have the opportunity to be able to train for the event.

And, you know, it’s just, we’re very lucky to be able to do that, I think. And it’s, yeah, it should be a lot of fun. I hope we have a good one. Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. I know this whole training for Rotto was taken to a different level with you. So I’m really thankful as well. Thank you. Well, thanks for joining me on the podcast. And I’ll, well, I’ll probably see you tomorrow at the pool. But yes, we’ll, yeah, that’s right. And chat to you in a couple of weeks after Rotnest. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.