I've been swimming for Masters for 34 yrs (age 58 on 1/27/13) and like to swim 6 days/week, 4000 to 6000 yds/day, across most of the year, taking maybe 2 weeks off per year. Obviously, I tend to get tired over time. The key issue seems to be how tired is too tired??? I've read Maglischo's books ("Swimming Fast", "Swimming Faster") and he uses a % effort formulation based on HR and/or best time in an event. If you're doing repeats at say 30-50% slower than your best race time, is there value in that from the long term development perspective??? When I rest and taper for a meet or race, I seem to recover pretty well and I'm much closer to the national 55-59 records than I was in the 25-29 AG, so it seems like I must be doing something right, but wondered what long-time Masters swimmers thoughts are. Also, FWIW, I do most of my training on my own, but just race whoever happens to be in the pool.
When my work schedule cooperates, I train much the same as you, swim365. Ideally, I swim 6 days a week, ranging from 3500-7500 yards per day, with a good week resulting in about ~35,000 yards in the pool. Every now and then I'll have a rockstar week and hit up to 45,000 yards in the pool, but I'm much more likely to miss practices and swim lower yardage due to work than I am to get extra practices in.
When I do hit the full slate of practices, I'm really dragging for the first week or two, then I maintain what feels like about an 85% energy level from there on out. I'll be really sucky in practice towards the end of the first week/beginning of the second week, but from there I'll pick up speed again and have seen some big endurance gains at 90-95% effort during extended periods of heavy weeks. Not much in the way of speed gains during that time, but once I start tapering, the speed comes back full blast.
To sum it up, I wouldn't be worried about the yardage or the tiredness unless it starts to impact your workouts and your non-chlorinated life. I'm perfectly fine with my 85% energy level during heavy training periods, but if it ever gets lower than that for extended periods, I stop and reassess my training plan.
Ya, I have backed off of my biking and running and have actually increased my yardage in past two weeks up to 50K/wk, and have actually been feeling really good last 3 days. What used to feel hard now feels easy and my times have dropped considerably. I may crash tomorrow but I'm going to try to keep this really good feeling going as long as possible:)
