September 16, 2026 – Back in the Pool and 21 Days to Huntsman

After eight consecutive days without training, today I finally returned to the pool.

September 8 through September 15 were medically restricted days with no workouts. That wasn’t planned recovery and it wasn’t a normal break in the training schedule. Training simply had to stop for a while.

More importantly, I now have my doctor’s clearance to compete at the Huntsman World Senior Games. So the Road to Huntsman continues.

There are only 21 days until I swim 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.

First Swim Back

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from today’s workout. Eight days without swimming isn’t an enormous amount of time, but it is long enough to wonder how the water will feel and how much of the conditioning from the previous training block will still be there.

The answer was encouraging.

Metric	Result
Distance	2,650 m
Swimming Time	43:49
Average Pace	1:40 / 100 m
Normalized Pace	1:39 / 100 m
Average Heart Rate	123 bpm
Maximum Heart Rate	173 bpm
sTSS	66
Intensity Factor	0.97
Calories	594

The workout included 1,575 meters of freestyle and 1,075 meters of breaststroke. That gave me enough work in both of my competition strokes to get a useful picture of where things stood without making today’s swim a race-distance test.

The Speed Didn’t Disappear

One of the first things I noticed in the data was that my short-distance freestyle speed was still there.

An early 4 × 50 freestyle set was remarkably consistent:

50	Time
1	41.64
2	41.77
3	42.22
4	41.62

Only 0.60 seconds separated the fastest and slowest repetitions.

That is particularly encouraging because pacing consistency was becoming one of the major themes of my training immediately before the break. I have repeatedly demonstrated enough raw freestyle speed for the 800 and 1,500. The challenge has been distributing that speed efficiently instead of starting too fast and gradually giving it back.

A later 6 × 50 freestyle set followed a similar pattern for the first five repetitions: 43.51, 44.47, 43.70, 44.29 and 44.48 before the final 47.24. There is still some endurance to rebuild, but the underlying speed appears to be intact.

A Better Endurance Check

The short repetitions tell me that speed is available, but they don’t tell me whether I can immediately reproduce my pre-break endurance. I don’t expect them to.

A continuous 350-meter freestyle during today’s workout was 5:41.13, approximately 1:37.5 per 100 meters. My current 1,500-meter training best averages approximately 1:36.3 per 100 meters.

I am not treating the 350 as a race prediction or using it to change my 1,500-meter benchmark. It is simply encouraging that on my first day back in the water I could settle into a sustained pace reasonably close to the pace of my best 1,500 training swim.

Breaststroke Is Still There Too

Breaststroke accounted for 1,075 meters of today’s workout.

An early 200-meter breaststroke was 3:38.67, or approximately 1:49.3 per 100 meters. That isn’t intended to replace my 3:27.54 current 200-meter training benchmark, but it was a useful first indication that the stroke remained comfortable after the time away.

Later breaststroke repetitions also remained reasonably consistent. Two late 50s were 52.42 and 52.74, only 0.32 seconds apart.

As with freestyle, I’m more interested right now in how the stroke feels and whether I can repeat it consistently than in forcing a new best time during the first workout back.

Eight Days Off Changed the Training Numbers

TrainingPeaks shows the effect of the interruption very clearly.

Metric	Sep. 7	Sep. 16
Fitness	72	60
Fatigue	94	36
Form	-25	+29

The modeled Fitness number declined, which isn’t surprising after eight days without training. At the same time, Fatigue dropped dramatically and Form moved well into positive territory.

Today’s workout is also a reminder that a change in a modeled fitness number doesn’t translate directly into an equivalent change in swimming ability. The first swim back showed that a considerable amount of the speed and conditioning from the previous training block remains available.

September Training Log

The eight days between my September 7 swim and today’s return will remain in my training log as Medical Restricted – No Workout. They aren’t missed workouts that need to be recovered.

Date	Training	Swim Total
Sep. 1	Swim – 1,800 m	1,800 m
Sep. 2	Swim – 2,500 m	4,300 m
Sep. 3	Swim – 2,700 m	7,000 m
Sep. 4	Swim – 2,500 m	9,500 m
Sep. 5	Swim – 3,400 m	12,900 m
Sep. 6	Outdoor jog – no swim	12,900 m
Sep. 7	Swim – 2,500 m	15,400 m
Sep. 8	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 9	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 10	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 11	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 12	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 13	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 14	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 15	Medical Restricted – No Workout	15,400 m
Sep. 16	Swim – 2,650 m	18,050 m

September now stands at 18,050 meters of swimming and 425 swim sTSS.

The Road to Huntsman Continues

The biggest news for me isn’t today’s pace or any particular split. I have my doctor’s clearance to compete, and I intend to be at Huntsman.

What I am not going to do is try to cram eight days of missed training into the remaining three weeks.

For the next few days, I’m going to play the training schedule by ear. If I feel like swimming, I’ll swim. How far I go and what I do in the pool will depend on how I feel that day. There is no reason right now to force a predetermined distance or pace simply because it appeared on a training schedule written before the interruption.

After a few workouts, I should have a much better idea of how quickly my endurance is returning and what kind of race-specific work makes sense before tapering for Huntsman.

21 Days to Huntsman

Three weeks from today I will swim the 200-meter breaststroke at the Huntsman World Senior Games.

The 800-meter freestyle follows in 22 days, and the 1,500-meter freestyle in 23 days.

The training plan has taken an unexpected detour, but the destination hasn’t changed.

Today’s 2,650 meters wasn’t about proving that eight days away from training didn’t matter. It was about finding out what was still there when I got back into the water. The answer was encouraging: the strokes felt available, the speed was still present, and I was able to put together a solid 43-minute workout on my first day back.

For now, that’s enough. Tomorrow I’ll see how I feel and decide what comes next.