Firstly, apologies if this has been brought up before. I'm sure it must have been covered at some time over the years.
I'm in the 70-74 year age group, and on October 28th I'll be swimming a 1500m freestyle, and hoping for a good time. I'm training twice a day, covering between 7,500m and 9,000m daily.
The question is - How long should I allow for the taper? I feel as though I could train right up to the event. Do you think a short taper of about 3 days would be sufficient, or does it need to be longer. I'd be keen to hear how you would approach this.
Thanks
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.
Holy smokes, Graham, congratulations! That's a fantastic time.
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.Excellent!!
I've always had a real problem 'coming off' a heavy training programme. I have this belief that I'll lose my fitness.
You're certainly not alone in this. I'm always worried my fitness will drop off if I rest too much even though rationally there's no way my fitness should be affected and certainly any fitness drop will be more than offset by the gain from resting, but it's still a worry during taper!
Impressive swim. Congrats!
Care to share how you ultimately decided to taper for the race?
I'm not saying this is right. In fact I rarely get the taper right, so I wouldn't advise anyone to follow this. I still don't know if it worked for me. Maybe I could have gone a bit faster if I'd done a longer taper? I'll never know.
During the last three months I have suffered fatigue greater than I have ever done before. Probably due to my age. I'm now 70.
When I was 55 I followed a similar training regime where I was covering 8-10k metres a day, and 6-7k of this was on butterfly. I was able to keep this up for four months. At the end of it I managed to do 2:37.5 for 200 metres fly. Which, at the time was the fastest in Europe and gave me number 2 in the world, behind American, Robert Poiletman (an amazing swimmer). Since this effort, I haven't been able to compete respectably on butterfly, and now don't even swim it. Purely because I know the kind of work I must put in, and psychologically I can't face doing it again. I really can't.
I've always had a real problem 'coming off' a heavy training programme. I have this belief that I'll lose my fitness. My old coach always reminds me of what happened 15 years ago. I was training three times a day, and trying to fit in work as well. One day I couldn't do the mid-day session - I was too busy at work. At the evening's workout the coach asked how I was going. I told him I didn't swim at lunch-time, and that I felt as though I had lost some of my fitness. I hadn't trained 5 hours earlier and I thought my fitness had now suffered. How ridiculous, but I firmly believed it.
Nine days before my 1500m swim, I did my biggest set of all, 40 x 200m going every 3:30. It wasn't physically difficult, but it was mind-blowingly boring. That set signalled the end of my training regime. For the next 5 days I dropped back to two sessions a day, putting effort into the morning session and just using the evening session for relaxed swimming. These sessions amounted to 5k metres per day. The following three days were made up of one session a day, covering 2.8k metres per session. All swum at a reasonable pace.
I can do the training but it's the taper that beats me every time. I know I need advice and help on this.
I also need some "taper" advice. Really just how much to rest because I don't want to taper for every local meet. I'm signed up to compete in 1650 this Saturday and 400IM on Sunday. I usually ave 3000 yards once per day solo, with one-two days off per week. I vary +/- 500 yards depending on the sets I choose and how I feel. Thinking of taking tomorrow off since I swam Sun, Mon, Tues. and shoulders/muscles feeling more sore than I'd like. Sunday swam kind of hard - 16 x 100 free @ 0.10 rest main set, holding my target race pace, (which will likely be disappointingly slower all connected on race day) Tues was IM focus - all broken at either 50 or 100, and stroke drills, today more broken 1650 free (500-400-300-200-100-50 with long rest between but trying to descend pace) and some 100s build for stroke endurance: 3 rounds IMO of 3 x100 (9 total) as 50 st/50 fr - 25 fr/50 st/25 fr - 50 fr/50 st, each 100 on too long rest probably, work to rest ratio about 2:1. What should I do on Thursday and Friday? I think I might be doing too much this week, but I want to boost my confidence.
If your muscles are aching, I think it might be a good idea to have Thursday and Friday off altogether. After all, this is only 48 hours out of the water. Good luck with your swim.
