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.
At the last swim meet, I had the following splits for the 200 fly:
30.36 35.37 37.50 42.40
I felt strong until I finished at the 150 mark, and then BAMP....I almost didn't finish, and I was completely out of breath.
Any suggestions to improve it! My next meet is in 4 weeks. Thanks!
It goes to show you you really need to finish every race with everything you've got. You never know when that little extra could mean the difference of placing or not placing.
Haven't seen you around here for a while, Jim. How's the training been going?
My training was less then stellar in December, but not nearly as bad as yours. That just sounds like bad luck all around!
Well, the important thing is you're back at it.
I don't think I'm going to swim SC Nationals this year, but plan to do Worlds this summer at Stanford. Hopefully I can get in enough long course training to make a good showing there.
Yes.....you are very correct I must say......as far as my training is going....well....not so good....(I hope Ande doesn't read this!)
I missed around 5 or 6 weeks of training from early December to mid January because of an injury I sustained during Thanksgiving Break (throwing long football passes to my brothers at my Mom's house) and the fact that our YMCA caught on fire just before Christmas and the pool was closed for a month.....So everyone on my team missed at least a month of training as a result.....We're just back into our second week of training since the fire......We did our first real threshhold set last night since the fire which was:
SCM: ( 4 x 200 on 2:45 followed by 4 x 100 on 1:25 ) x 2
I made it through the first time o.k. holding around 2:30 per 200 and 1:12 - 1:14 or so per 100....then the second time through I fell apart after the second 200 and didn't make the interval....I came back and made the 4 100's afterwards though.....the water was very hot (around 88 degrees) ...but lets face it....I'm way out of shape and grossly overweight again....I was 185 at last year's nationals ....now I'm around 215 and climbing.....I think Ande is going to smash me like a guitar in our 500 free challenge now....Damn Longhorns!!
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
my 200 fly tips are
breathe a lot
concentrate on fast turns and great streamlines
stay relaxed
keep your hips up
save your legs
but most important
take it way easier going out
keep your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th 50 splits closer together
in that swim there was a 7 second difference between your 2nd and 4th 50
30.36
35.37 1:05.73
37.50
42.40 1:19.90
as an example
you'd be way better off
if you split your 200 fly
32 36 36 36
the other part of the equation is to do some hrd middle distance training and get in great shape.
Ande
I must admit I've swum some pretty horrendous 200 fly's in my day, like in 1981 I went 2:17 in the 200 LCM fly splitting it
1:00 1:17, that last 50 was truly agonizing
In college I think I went 1:53 in the 200 y fly splitting it
:53 1:00 I probably could have gone much faster,
I was 48.8 in the 100 fly.
for fun one season
I may train some for the 200 fly
enter a few meets and
attempt to split it correctly.
Originally posted by butterfly
At the last swim meet, I had the following splits for the 200 fly:
30.36 35.37 37.50 42.40
I felt strong until I finished at the 150 mark, and then BAMP....I almost didn't finish, and I was completely out of breath.
Any suggestions to improve it! My next meet is in 4 weeks. Thanks!
I've never enjoyed any race at 200 yds/meters. I hate training for them and racing for them. I love though to get into a pool and swim either forever or really short fast. I think that 200 fly is probably one of the hardest to train for and I think people wh do it regularly are trememdous.
