Taper for 1500m freestyle

WOW!!! 7500-9000m a day? WOW!!! a 1500 will feel like a sprint i would recommend against a 3 day taper...that does nothing you could do anywhere from 21days to 7days you should know what your body does by now...its not like you are 14 at your 1st meet

WOW!!! 7500-9000m a day? WOW!!! Yeah, seriously! :bow: It is amazing your body at that age can withstand that kind of yardage! :applaud: How many days per week do you swim? Regardless, I am in awe. My 54 year-old body can't deal with half that yardage. :cane: Granted, I swim six days per week, but I now have to limit my yardage to under 3,000 yards on any given day to be able to keep from breaking down. Good luck in your 1500m! I hope you break a World Record! :cheerleader: P.S. Welcome back to the Forums. It has been awhile since I have seen you, and it's nice to have you back! :agree:

Wow, that's a lot of yardage! Good for you, you'll be strong for this for sure. I'd look at doing about 10-14 days of taper, decreasing your yardage, but increasing the speed in short intervals (e.g 5x200 or 10x100s at specific intervals fast) to keep the muscles twitching. You want to do the taper so your body has enough time to heal and so that you feel like you're going to explode with energy the day of the race. The last week before taper, I wouldn't do more than about 2500-3000/day at the high end and get lots of rest.

WOW!!! 7500-9000m a day? WOW!!! a 1500 will feel like a sprint i would recommend against a 3 day taper...that does nothing you could do anywhere from 21days to 7days you should know what your body does by now...its not like you are 14 at your 1st meet Agree on all points. I'd shoot for about two weeks. Keep some aerobic content going the first week, but less than you are doing now and perhaps with more rest. The second week you can really ease up. Don't really need anything aerobic. Just focus on lots of rest and pacing.

WOW!!! 7500-9000m a day? WOW!!!:bow::bow: I have no idea how to advise you. But, for what it's worth, I swam a great (for me) 1500 last December and 1650 this spring, but I was averaging about 15-16K yards a week. In both cases, I did a 5 day drop taper that was essentially this: Day 1 - out of pool Day 2 = 3,0000 = with the main set being a broken mile (note that I typically swim about 5 days a week so this was just a bit lower volume-wise than my typical workouts) Day 3 = 2,750 yards = main set as the Salo Pulse Plot (e.g.,forums.usms.org/entry.php Day 4 = 2,250 yards = virtually all technique work with one fast 100 Day 5 = 1,100 yards = easy meet warmup Caveats: Historically, I need less taper than the average swimmer, especially for a distance race. Moreover, for distance races, a drop-taper has worked better for me than a longer taper. If I'm primarily racing 200s to 500, though, I'll do a 10 day taper. I think you'd need a MUCH longer taper given the massive volume you're training, so I'd second the notions of a 10-14 day taper

Good luck and let us know how you do! And I agree to having a day off/week at a minimum. I'll bet you'll be surprised at how different it'll feel giving yourself a break. Maybe go for a walk instead on that day?

Boys and girls, thank you so much for the advice. I’m swimming every day and really think I should have one day off in the week. At my age I still don’t do anything sensibly! I’ve got a very big set of 200s to do tonight, then I’ll have to re-think. Thanks again.

I’m swimming every day and really think I should have one day off in the week. So you're swimming somewhere north of 50k meters per week? Wow!

Relieved more than anything! I'd have been suicidal if I'd produced a bad swim, after putting in so much hard work. This seems to be a common theme in successful athletes. I think it was the tennis player Jimmy Conners who said, "I don't mind winning, but I cant stand losing." I managed to get the European record yesterday for the 1500m 70-74 age group with a time of 22:04.91. The previous record was 22:08.97. Thanks for all the advice given here. Much appreciated. I can now cut back for a while, and live sensibly again. Congratulations! A well earned break, made all the more satisfying by coming up on the right side of the record.

Relieved more than anything! I'd have been suicidal if I'd produced a bad swim, after putting in so much hard work. I managed to get the European record yesterday for the 1500m 70-74 age group with a time of 22:04.91. The previous record was 22:08.97. Thanks for all the advice given here. Much appreciated. I can now cut back for a while, and live sensibly again.