Pleased to hear that a structured training schedule is benefiting you. If you were ready for your recovery spin, this tells me that you are likely doing your workouts correctly. You should feel the same way when the recovery week happens.
To answer your questions, first off, don’t get too caught up on terminology and overthinking it. Quick and hard are the same for swimming as they are for everything else. They are very similar but the intensity of physical and mental energy are slightly different. For quick, you want to pick up the speed. For hard, this is when you pick up the speed but also pick up the intensity of your effort. Think about how you can get every bit of power with your stroke possible. High elbow stroke, push with your forearm, complete your follow through, etc.
At the beginning of the program the swim workouts focused on specific drills to cover many of the specific areas of your stroke. However as the season progresses, you will see drill as this gives you the opportunity to continue to focus on the drills you need to continued effort on. This will be different for everyone and hopefully the feedback you got at the clinics will help guide which drills you should be practicing.
In the end, don’t get bogged down with detail. Think big picture. If you know you don’t need work on the finger trip drag because you keep your elbow high, then focus on the catch up drill if you need work on front quadrant swimming. It’s what you need for progressing your optimal performance. Great questions!
