In my most recent blog entry, "One Man's Garbage..." forums.usms.org/blog.php , I asked my fellow swimmers their respective opinions on the impact long, slow, continuous swimming has on meet performance.
The expression "garbage yards" (and the pejorative overtones such a phrase conjurs) has become so embedded in the forum lexicon that many, I suspect, now consider as indisputable truth swimming this way is a waste of time for anyone with competitive ambitions.
Such a view appears particularly well-entrenched among the many non-credentialed exercise physiology pontificators here on the forums who also have a fondness for sprinting and dry land exercise.
But is the concept of garbage yards truly valid--or a kind of urban legend made up largely by sprinters who would rather be doing something other than spending 90 minutes without stopping in the pool?
I don't mean only practicing this way. But if you are, like me, inclined to enjoy swimming, once or twice a week, long, slow, relatively relaxing, continuous yards, do you believe (and more importantly, perhaps, have any evidence to bolster said belief) that so-called "garbage yards" can have some value for actual racing?
Or do these only teach your body to swim slow?
I invite you to read my recent blog forums.usms.org/blog.php and post your thoughts advice there or here.
At the risk of provoking censure by the forum authorities, I furthermore ask you to leave all civility by the wayside.
Feel free to trash talk and smack upside the head of any and every one who disagrees with your personal bias here!
It's been way too long since these forums have had a good, old-fashioned range war of opinions run amuk and ad hominem attacks!
Go at each other tooth and claw. It will only stir the blood of us all, I say--something we garbage yard enthusiasts probably need a bit more of, I will admit.
Yeah, sadly, those guys are going 1:31 to 1:33 and they ARE NOT sprinting the whole way. They have a 200 race strategy that requires some level of pacing and likely the same kind of relative effort expenditure across the 50s as we do ... they're just a helluva lot faster than us old farts and mortals.
A couple years back, I did a deconstruction of the winning NCAA men's Div 1 200 freestyle on my vlog.
I concluded then that that year's winner had, indeed, swum a controlled race.
One thing that needs to be factored in here is that when you can swim the distance in 1:30+, you are exerting yourself a good 25 percent less, duration wise, than someone who is covering the same distance in, say, 2:00.
My own feeling about the 200, and why it is such a fiendish test, is that perhaps more than any other freestyle event, it requires a perfectly intelligent approach to pacing to do your best in.
50s, certainly, and 100s, oftentimes, are too short to require all that much strategy.
500s and beyond, at least for the likes of me, give you time to build and correct mistakes as you proceed.
But the 200 requires that perfect needle-threading of dual suffering--sprint suffering and distance suffering--but both types of suffering managed in such a way as to avoid the worst suffering of all, that is, mental suffering from either having wimped out to much on the front end, or gone out too fast and seized up on the back end, either of which approach will lead to ruin, time wise!
Anyhow, for anyone interested in reading about a NCAA championship 200 pace deconstructed by this amateur analyst, you can find it here:
forums.usms.org/blog.php
Yeah, sadly, those guys are going 1:31 to 1:33 and they ARE NOT sprinting the whole way. They have a 200 race strategy that requires some level of pacing and likely the same kind of relative effort expenditure across the 50s as we do ... they're just a helluva lot faster than us old farts and mortals.
A couple years back, I did a deconstruction of the winning NCAA men's Div 1 200 freestyle on my vlog.
I concluded then that that year's winner had, indeed, swum a controlled race.
One thing that needs to be factored in here is that when you can swim the distance in 1:30+, you are exerting yourself a good 25 percent less, duration wise, than someone who is covering the same distance in, say, 2:00.
My own feeling about the 200, and why it is such a fiendish test, is that perhaps more than any other freestyle event, it requires a perfectly intelligent approach to pacing to do your best in.
50s, certainly, and 100s, oftentimes, are too short to require all that much strategy.
500s and beyond, at least for the likes of me, give you time to build and correct mistakes as you proceed.
But the 200 requires that perfect needle-threading of dual suffering--sprint suffering and distance suffering--but both types of suffering managed in such a way as to avoid the worst suffering of all, that is, mental suffering from either having wimped out to much on the front end, or gone out too fast and seized up on the back end, either of which approach will lead to ruin, time wise!
Anyhow, for anyone interested in reading about a NCAA championship 200 pace deconstructed by this amateur analyst, you can find it here:
forums.usms.org/blog.php
