Yesterday’s cardio workout was a swim interval in place of the scheduled (short, hard) hill workout.  I chose to do a 10 x 100m EBEH workout.  The EBEH (for those of you who are as swimming noob-ish as I am) stands for easy-build-easy-hard.  

What happens is you do a warm-up (200m for me) and then start your work sets.  Each work set consists of one LENGTH (not lap) at a nice easy pace, followed by a second length at a “building” pace.  The building pace is supposed to be faster than the easy pace but not an all out sprint or anything that leaves you gasping.  I think of it as the pace (and form) that I would use to swim a length if a couple of really attractive women were watching from poolside – fast and smooth enough to impress but not so much that I couldn’t talk to them at the end of length.  Which of course I wouldn’t do because this is a purely hypothetical scenario and I’m in a fulfilling relationship (hi honey!).

Moving on.  After your building length you do an easy recovery length and finish up the work set with a hard length.  That’s exactly what is sounds like.  You go as fast and hard as you possibly can while maintaining as much form as you can.  It’s how you’d swim a lap if you were racing someone.  I assume.  I’ve never been in a swim race.  But I’ve got a fairly good grasp on the concept.

In between EBEH’s you can either rest or not depending on: a) your fitness level b) how “hard” your “hard” is c) your training goals and d) how many EBEH’s you’re planning on doing.  Myself, I strung the first three or four together (okay, okay, the first two or three) and then started stopping in between for the highly scientific and analytic time period of 10-15 deep gasping breaths before kicking off on the next EBEH interval.

Overall, a great workout.