Hi All
My name is Darian Townsend, I am an Olympic Gold Medalist from South Africa
( ). I am a 3 time Olympian (2004, 2008 and 2012). I held the SCM 200 IM world record in 2009/2010
and I currently hold 24 Masters world records.
Just thought I would introduce myself before I got into what I wanted to say today :)
I am going to be blogging about once a week or so on various swimming topics I am interested in or if any of you have topics you would like my opinion on, please feel free to message me and I will respond with a blog.
With the Championship season fast approaching (I assume you all are tapering for a meet last November/early December) I wanted to hear from you on what your expectations are and where you feel you are in your training? Do you feel confident that best times are coming? What makes this season different from last year, what have you done differently? Has a new piece of equipment you bought really made a big difference to your training?
From me personally, this season has been great so far. Firstly I am now American, and able to represent the US internationally. This is a huge deal for me and I feel very proud to call myself an American. After living here for over 10 years now, it feels great to wear the Red, White and Blue on my cap!
After a summer of trying a new form a training called USRPT (Ultra Short Race Pace Training) I decided to go back to the more traditional way of training, and I am really enjoying it! There is nothing quite like doing a long kick set and getting out the water afterwards and having your legs feel like jelly! (Kick sets are one thing that USRPT doesn't involve). I enjoy swimming, fast and slow in practice, so to be able to vary my efforts again is really making me happy once again to be in the water working hard!
So how is your season going? What meets are you doing? I am always looking for a meet to swim in a new place I haven't visited before?
Cheers
Hi Glenn
I appreciate your response. All the things you mentioned I did in my USRPT training. I moved on form the 8 x 50 and eventually got to 16 x 50 with a couple failures along the way.
I agree there are many ways to get to a goal at the end of the season. I understand where USRPT is coming from, but I don't believe it can be the only form of training you do. As I mentioned before when I swim my tapered 200's at the end of the season, I got tired off 2 turns and couldn't keep the pace going. I felt this too in the meets I swam mid season.
Swimming longer distances gets you used to not resting on the wall every 50 and this is where I feel USRPT falls short. However for a 100 race, I believe USRPT can be an efficient way for training. But from my experience I still believe you need to add other forms of training, like weights, dryland, kicking, pulling, etc. This is just my opinion.
I agree with you on the ready to race part. I swam some of my fastest 50's and 100's mid season while training on USRPT!!! But come the end of season I swam slower and just felt exhausted at my main competition.
Thanks again for your response!
Darian,
Well, I suppose it doesn't work for everyone.
This week, for the first time, I did two sets of 30x50 at every practice. It was tough, but from Monday to Friday I did a total of 37, 38, 41, 41 and today 43 fiftys for a one week total of 10,000 yards at race pace (of course I then go home and take a nap). It would take a month of traditional workouts (a least where I train) to get that much race pace work. For me it is the only training I do. I don't do any slow swimming, pulling, drills or kicking. I believe in it and it works for me, so I will stick with it. I think it is critical to believe in what you are doing. So whatever you choose to do having a positive attitude about it is half the battle.
I actually think USRPT is better for middle and long distance than it is for 50 and 100.
In the end, it is all about swimming fast, so if the training you do produces fast swimming, then stay with that training.
Turns if done at race pace will fatigue you and this is something that I didn't train under USRPT.
Us swimmers are all mental, we like to feel good and when we feel good we swim fast. If you aren't feeling good, then your times won't be what you want them to be. USRPT took the feeling away from me and replaced it with numbers and I lost confidence in those numbers and myself when I didn't hit them. It's hard to come in every day to workout and hit speeds you want to race at!
Welcome Darian!!
I watched you swim in Santa Clara last May..AMAZING!! Congratulations on your U.S. citizenship. Very happy to have your represent us! That is a very interesting breakdown of USRPT. Do you think that it hurt you more mentally, physically or both? I know the type of swimmer that I am and from your description, I feel this training would make me feel defeated constantly. Just curious on your thoughts.
Cheryl
Thanks for your replies everyone.
I would say the USRPT training beat me up both mentally and physically.
On the mental side if I did a practice that I wasn't able to hit my pace I felt defeated and not on track to reach my goals at the end of the season. But at the same time when I did hit my pace, then I felt on track and confident. But as you know not every day will be a good day at the office, but when you are constantly going up against fast times in practice, I tended to really over analyze my bad practices and was as a result really moody until I could go my goal pace again. My problem was that I felt I couldn't relax away from the pool in between practices because I was worried about how I would feel the next day. This became mentally really tiring!
Physically going fast every day at your race pace breaks you down very quickly! Going back I would definitely add in a few recovery practices in between the race pace practices. Some longer swimming is needed to lengthen out the stroke. Sprinting all the time I felt tight, which is not how you want to feel when you race, you want to feel long and easy. Some recovery practices where you swim longer sets, some 400's, some 200's I feel would help a lot!
Here is a sample workout for a 200 free race pace set (SCY):
9133
Hopefully you can read that.....
