Having benefitted tremendously from advice gleaned from this forum on how to swim the 200 butterfly, and having no intention of doing the 200 butterfly again for at least a year, I would now like to switch my request for strategic advice to the next event I am hoping to swim well: the 100 yard freestyle.
Over the years, I have had several coaches tell me several different things about how to race this distance, and I would like to hear what my fellow masters have found to work the best.
Here are the two main strategies I've been given:
Strategy #1: The Don't Die Strategy
Swim the first 50 as fast as you possibly can while staying smooth and under control; this means it's a little less frenetic and exhausting than an all out 50 sprint.
Swim the 3rd 25 length long and smooth, resting ever so slightly. Make sure to stretch your stroke. As you approach the final turn, pick up the pace to full sprint, do a very fast turn, and continue sprinting all out till you finish.
Strategy #2: The Don't Save Anything Strategy
This one is a little easier to remember: just sprint the whole thing as fast as you possibly can from the get go. The rationale here is that even if you die on the final length, the time you save by sprinting early will more than make up for the time you lose by dying late. The advocate of this strategy suggests that when you die, you feel like you're swimming in molasses, but the truth is, you don't really slow down as much as you feel you're slowing down, especially on a distance as "short" as a 100.
One of the good things about the 200 fly is that if you can finish that, the pain of a garden variety 100 free seems relatively less intimidating. Still, I want to do my best time, and all considerations of pain notwithstanding, does strategy #2 really work better than strategy #1?
Or is some amalgam of the two the way to go--i.e., do strategy #1 without "resting" on the third length?
Final question: I feel I am in pretty good aerobic shape now, with my times in distances of 200 and greater the best they've ever been. My 25s and 50s, however, have noticeably slowed. The 100s are still pretty good--this year's best 100 free of 52.5 is not that far off last year's best of 52.09, whereas this year's 100 fly of 59.59 is better than last year's best of 1:00.20.
I suspect that my "slow twitch" muscles are much better trained now than my "fast twitch" muscles (and at 49, I also suspect that the latter are atrophying faster than the former.) Our next meet is in about 4 weeks. Should I start doing more sprint training at this point in the season, and if so, how much? And would it make sense to do weight lifting now (I've let this slack off during the hard swimming phase of the season.)
Thanks as always for your advice, fellow swimmers. I truly appreciate it.
Parents
Former Member
Adding to the 100 race strategy I think #1 with a slight variation works best. Take the first 50 out as described swimming fast but stay "strong and long". As pointed out above, you'll still go pretty close to your best 50 (1.5 seconds slower perhaps): SPRINT the 3rd 25 then you can hold on for the last 25 since, as pointed by another observer, you will slow down but not as much as you think. This can work short course because with a really good turn at the 75 and strong push-off/streamline you don't really have to swim that far. I find if you push it too hard early in the race it's really hard to get a really good last turn that makes the final 25 seem much longer.
Adding to the 100 race strategy I think #1 with a slight variation works best. Take the first 50 out as described swimming fast but stay "strong and long". As pointed out above, you'll still go pretty close to your best 50 (1.5 seconds slower perhaps): SPRINT the 3rd 25 then you can hold on for the last 25 since, as pointed by another observer, you will slow down but not as much as you think. This can work short course because with a really good turn at the 75 and strong push-off/streamline you don't really have to swim that far. I find if you push it too hard early in the race it's really hard to get a really good last turn that makes the final 25 seem much longer.
