September 7, 2026 – One Final Swim Before a Short Break and 30 Days to Huntsman

Today was not intended to be a pace-setting workout, a race simulation, or another fitness test. I simply wanted to get into the pool one more time before taking a short break from swimming.

The result was a 2,500-meter mixed freestyle and breaststroke session that stayed comfortably on the moderate side. After the stronger training block I completed during the first week of September, that was exactly what I wanted from today’s swim.

Today’s Workout

Metric	Result
Distance	2,500 m
Swimming Time	44:09
Average Pace	1:47 / 100 m
Normalized Pace	1:46 / 100 m
Average Heart Rate	124 bpm
Maximum Heart Rate	152 bpm
sTSS	55
Intensity Factor	0.91
Calories	611

The stroke distribution was almost perfectly balanced, with 1,200 meters of freestyle and 1,300 meters of breaststroke. That made this a good general swimming session rather than another workout centered around one particular race.

Not Every Swim Needs to Be a Test

One of the challenges as Huntsman gets closer is resisting the urge to turn every good opportunity to swim into another test. There is always a temptation to see whether I can hold race pace longer, swim another fast 200, or improve one of my current training benchmarks.

That was not today’s objective.

I wanted to swim, move through both of my primary strokes, and leave the pool without creating another major recovery demand. The 55 sTSS, 0.91 intensity factor, and average heart rate of 124 bpm suggest that I kept the overall session where it belonged.

Freestyle Speed Was Still Available

Even though I wasn’t trying to establish a freestyle pace today, the workout still showed that my normal freestyle speed was available when I wanted it.

Across the 1,200 meters of freestyle, the moving pace averaged approximately 1:36 per 100 meters. There was also a standalone 100-meter freestyle in 1:31.59, while a later three-repeat 100-meter freestyle set averaged approximately 1:37 per 100 meters.

I don’t consider any of those numbers new benchmarks. Rest periods, stroke changes, and the overall structure of the workout make them very different from a continuous race-distance swim. They simply confirm the pattern I’ve been seeing throughout September: short-duration freestyle speed is not currently the limiting factor.

Breaststroke Stayed Controlled

The 1,300 meters of breaststroke were considerably more relaxed than my dedicated breaststroke-endurance sessions. The overall moving pace was approximately 1:55 per 100 meters.

That was appropriate for today’s purpose. I wasn’t trying to reproduce my 200-meter breaststroke training pace or create another endurance-under-fatigue test. I simply wanted enough breaststroke volume to maintain the feel of the stroke without turning the session into another hard workout.

Where the Race Benchmarks Remain

Because today’s workout wasn’t designed as a race test, none of my current Huntsman benchmarks change.

Event	Current Training Benchmark
1500 Freestyle	24:04.84
800 Freestyle	12:40.25
200 Breaststroke	3:27.54

Those remain the numbers that matter when I evaluate my progress toward Huntsman. Today’s swim belongs in a different category: a moderate training session that closed out the current block.

September Training So Far

Date	Pool Distance	September Total
Sep. 1	1,800 m	1,800 m
Sep. 2	2,500 m	4,300 m
Sep. 3	2,700 m	7,000 m
Sep. 4	2,500 m	9,500 m
Sep. 5	3,400 m	12,900 m
Sep. 6	Non-pool workout	12,900 m
Sep. 7	2,500 m	15,400 m

That brings September to 15,400 meters of swimming and 359 swim sTSS through today.

More important than the total distance, the first week of September included recovery work, breaststroke endurance, freestyle endurance, a continuous 1,500-meter effort, mixed aerobic training, and today’s moderate closing swim.

Closing This Training Block

I am going to consider today’s swim the end of this particular training block.

There is no reason to try to make up meters while I am away from the pool, and there is no benefit in trying to preserve the original September schedule exactly. When I return, the better approach will be to look at how much time I actually spent out of the water and then build the next block from there.

The fitness I’ve developed over the past several weeks isn’t going to disappear because of a short interruption. The important thing will be returning intelligently rather than trying to immediately recover everything I didn’t swim.

30 Days to Huntsman

There are now 30 days until the 200-meter breaststroke on October 7, followed by the 800-meter freestyle on October 8 and the 1,500-meter freestyle on October 9.

Today’s swim didn’t produce a new race benchmark, and it wasn’t supposed to. It accomplished something simpler: 2,500 meters of comfortable swimming, equal attention to freestyle and breaststroke, and one final opportunity to feel good in the water before stepping away for a little while.

Sometimes the best workout is the one that does exactly what it was intended to do.