I added wrong! I've been swimming 14,000 yards per week for the last 15 years, not 30,000! :afraid:I recently hit 60 and have begun to wonder if my times would improve if I did less yards and incorporated more quality workouts in. Since I have a bit of OCD, I would like your input for those 50 and over. How many yards a week do you put in?
I have been swimming masters since 2007, and like many I have an OCD streak that compels me to track yardage and–in recent years–practice times. Over the holidays I compiled all my data from the last 7 years and compared my meet performance with my yardage totals. The first year (2007) I piled up tons of distance and aerobic endurance stuff. In my highest total years, I put in north of 500,000 yards. Last year I swam 330,000 yards, but achieved masters personal bests because I focused more on high intensity sets. I don't really swim events any longer than 200 yards/meters, so conditioning has limits. Far better to focus on speed, interspersed with recovery. My working goal remains 10,000 per week. Distance matters to me as a cumulative achievement for health reasons, but I have decoupled yardage and performance. At the end of the day, going faster matters–even if (when I am honest with myself) it's nothing more than a ruse, to keep me in the pool at all.
I have been swimming masters since 2007, and like many I have an OCD streak that compels me to track yardage and–in recent years–practice times. Over the holidays I compiled all my data from the last 7 years and compared my meet performance with my yardage totals. The first year (2007) I piled up tons of distance and aerobic endurance stuff. In my highest total years, I put in north of 500,000 yards. Last year I swam 330,000 yards, but achieved masters personal bests because I focused more on high intensity sets. I don't really swim events any longer than 200 yards/meters, so conditioning has limits. Far better to focus on speed, interspersed with recovery. My working goal remains 10,000 per week. Distance matters to me as a cumulative achievement for health reasons, but I have decoupled yardage and performance. At the end of the day, going faster matters–even if (when I am honest with myself) it's nothing more than a ruse, to keep me in the pool at all.
