I signed up for the 200 fly next Sunday and am wondering if anyone has some advice on how to swim this. My twin brother told me he swam it in college, and by the last length, he felt he was actually moving backwards. I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.
To get into shape for this, I've been doing a lot of 25's fly with 10-15 seconds rest. I started doing 8 at a time and have worked my way up to 40. Yesterday, I did 20 x 25s then 10 x 50 on a minute.
Questions:
Pacing--reason would say to go out slow so you have something left for the second hundred, but I wonder if this is right. After all, you get tired either way, so maybe going out reasonably fast means you will end up with a better time (albeit a greater feeling of misery on the last length or two.) I'm not talking a sprint pace, but a reasonably fast clip. Or is this a recipe for disaster?
Stroke mechanics--does the fly need to be modified for a 200--i.e., not pulling all the way through, gliding longer, hand entry a bit wider than usual, etc. I've read that some people can swim a continuous mile butterfly, and I wonder if they are swimming the same stroke I do. It's hard to imagine...
I have only swum the 200 fly once--last year--and got a 2:30 on it. My 100 fly has improved this year (a 59.59 , the first time I've broken a minute since high school 31 years ago), and I am in better overall shape this year, so I am hoping to lower the 2:30 to at least a 2:25 (which would give me the Y age group record in our league.) Any advice from 200 flier veterans would be truly appeciated.
Thanks in advance for your words of wisdom.
Parents
Former Member
I hope its o.k. to resurrect an old thread like this one (the last posting was sometime in 2002)?? .....especially when it received such a high rating and all......but I also want to make a couple of comments about the 200 fly since I've always considered it to be my favorite and my best event.
First of all, I want to say that Jim Thorton's essay on his 200 fly experience was extremely entertaining to read....as is so many of his postings here and magazine articles....the man just has a great way with words! ...Thanks again Jim for the excellent commentary!
I had a similar experience at last years scy nationals in Ft. Lauderdale when I swam in my second ever masters meet and my first 200 fly since college (which was 19 years or so ago). I was all shaved and tapered and wearing my fancy new speedo fastskin space suit....so nothing to worry about right?....I had also done lots of butterfly in practice over the previous 3 to 4 months.....It was my last swim of the meet and my last chance to place in the top 10 in anything at the meet (although I slightly bettered a couple of my times since my first ever masters meet about 6 weeks prior, my best finish thus far going into the 200 fly was 16th in the 100 fly).....anyway, I went out feeling long and smooth as suggested by many of the other posters on this thread....but I was out perhaps a little too fast in a 58.5 or so at the 100 mark.....then I went a 32 or 33 for my third 50 as the lactic acid started to build up and take its toll.....but it was that last 50 that really really began to hurt!!......Wow....I had totally forgotten what it was like when the piano hits that fast.....Just like Jim siad (and so many others here).....I barely finished the race......but luckily b/c I was out fast enough and still held on to some degree despite the excruciating pain....I pulled off a 10th place performance on that final swim of the meet (of course there were only 16 or so swimmers entered in that event.....but who's counting right...LOL!!).....My last 50 was a 36 or so and I ended up with a 2:06 something.....I only found out later that there were 2 other swimmers who went 2:06 as well that finished just ahead of me.....another thing I found out about masters swimming.....the time differences between places at nationals was much tighter than I would have ever guessed.....Another example was my 100 fly....I went 56.4 or so and placed 16th overall.....even though the winning time was a low 54....16 places all within 2.5 seconds in that event......granted the winning 200 fly time was MUCH faster than 2:06 (and if Dennis Baker had been there it would have been MUCH MUCH faster in fact).....but I had never been nudged out by less than a second in a 200 fly before by 2 different swimmers....even in college.....I obtained a great deal of respect for masters swimming after swimming in that meet.....I found out that there are not just a handful of pretty fast swimmers at the top of each agegroup out there....but instead, there is a fairly sizable number of very good and very competitive swimmers in each agegroup.....One of the things that I have now come to really like and respect about USMS....it is a much more legitimate competitve organization then I would have ever believed before I ever stumbled in to it!
Newmastersswimmer
I hope its o.k. to resurrect an old thread like this one (the last posting was sometime in 2002)?? .....especially when it received such a high rating and all......but I also want to make a couple of comments about the 200 fly since I've always considered it to be my favorite and my best event.
First of all, I want to say that Jim Thorton's essay on his 200 fly experience was extremely entertaining to read....as is so many of his postings here and magazine articles....the man just has a great way with words! ...Thanks again Jim for the excellent commentary!
I had a similar experience at last years scy nationals in Ft. Lauderdale when I swam in my second ever masters meet and my first 200 fly since college (which was 19 years or so ago). I was all shaved and tapered and wearing my fancy new speedo fastskin space suit....so nothing to worry about right?....I had also done lots of butterfly in practice over the previous 3 to 4 months.....It was my last swim of the meet and my last chance to place in the top 10 in anything at the meet (although I slightly bettered a couple of my times since my first ever masters meet about 6 weeks prior, my best finish thus far going into the 200 fly was 16th in the 100 fly).....anyway, I went out feeling long and smooth as suggested by many of the other posters on this thread....but I was out perhaps a little too fast in a 58.5 or so at the 100 mark.....then I went a 32 or 33 for my third 50 as the lactic acid started to build up and take its toll.....but it was that last 50 that really really began to hurt!!......Wow....I had totally forgotten what it was like when the piano hits that fast.....Just like Jim siad (and so many others here).....I barely finished the race......but luckily b/c I was out fast enough and still held on to some degree despite the excruciating pain....I pulled off a 10th place performance on that final swim of the meet (of course there were only 16 or so swimmers entered in that event.....but who's counting right...LOL!!).....My last 50 was a 36 or so and I ended up with a 2:06 something.....I only found out later that there were 2 other swimmers who went 2:06 as well that finished just ahead of me.....another thing I found out about masters swimming.....the time differences between places at nationals was much tighter than I would have ever guessed.....Another example was my 100 fly....I went 56.4 or so and placed 16th overall.....even though the winning time was a low 54....16 places all within 2.5 seconds in that event......granted the winning 200 fly time was MUCH faster than 2:06 (and if Dennis Baker had been there it would have been MUCH MUCH faster in fact).....but I had never been nudged out by less than a second in a 200 fly before by 2 different swimmers....even in college.....I obtained a great deal of respect for masters swimming after swimming in that meet.....I found out that there are not just a handful of pretty fast swimmers at the top of each agegroup out there....but instead, there is a fairly sizable number of very good and very competitive swimmers in each agegroup.....One of the things that I have now come to really like and respect about USMS....it is a much more legitimate competitve organization then I would have ever believed before I ever stumbled in to it!
Newmastersswimmer
