So, after years of training in an Olympic-style pool designed for competitive swimming, I just moved to a small town with a "nice enough" leisure pool which ostensibly is supposed to be 25 meters long. The issue? I am just busting a gut to hold pace times which normally would be cruising for me. I am a full 5 seconds slow on the hundred across the board.
I did spend much of my summer working stroke correction in an outdoor pool without too much speed work, but I did rock-out quite a few hard sets to maintain fitness. I just cannot fathom how a change in pools can gut performance this much. Could it be the stress of the move (2000 miles and a whole new carreer) or perhaps the fact the pool is kept really warm? Its as if the pool is about one or two meters too long. (BTW: I usually go about 15 strokes per length and this pool has me working hard to get less than 17 strokes).
Any ideas or similar circumstances?
Two ideas:
1) There may be a signfcant altitude difference between your old training pool and your new one. If so, it could take some time before you are fully aclimated.
2) Even if you have been swimming regularly, if you haven't been doing hard paced sets, it's not impossible that you may have lost 5s/100. This happens to me if I go into "leisure mode" for 3 or more weeks, wherein I cut my total mileage significantly and mostly ignore the pace clock. In my experience the speed comes back with about 3-4 weeks of steady work.
Two ideas:
1) There may be a signfcant altitude difference between your old training pool and your new one. If so, it could take some time before you are fully aclimated.
2) Even if you have been swimming regularly, if you haven't been doing hard paced sets, it's not impossible that you may have lost 5s/100. This happens to me if I go into "leisure mode" for 3 or more weeks, wherein I cut my total mileage significantly and mostly ignore the pace clock. In my experience the speed comes back with about 3-4 weeks of steady work.
