I am considering participating in a long course meet, though I have never even seen a 50-meter pool in person, let alone practiced in one. I will NOT have the opportunity to practice in one before the meet. How much more difficult is long course meters than short course yards (e.g. no walls to push off from? How should I modify my training in my 25-yard pool to prepare? Also, I recall a chart that converted short-course times into long course, but I don't remember where I saw it. Any ideas?
The toughest thing for me with long course is that I'm so habitualized to expect a wall every 25 yards that it seems to take forever to get to the end of the pool. The antidote, I think, is to swim some practices in a long course pool if you can find one. This will help retrain your mindset a little so the distance doesn't seem so freaky.
Here's the web site for the coverter:
www.swiminfo.com/.../conversions.asp
I have recently written a small Visual Basic.NET program to do this conversion. It also includes estimates of the 50yd - 50m back, *** and fly events and some of the distance free events that are not included on the SwimInfo web site. These are probably accurate to about 1% or somewhat better, in my own case. Having the program would make you independent of the internet.
I am looking for anyone who would be willing to test out this software & would be happy to e-mail a copy to whoever wants one. In particular, there are many combinations and I have not tested them all. I would like feedback on what makes the program fail. Unfortunately, with Microsoft's new version of Visual Basic, there is a required 20 Megabyte download support framework before the software will run. Also, it will work on Windows 2000, XP (both tested) and probably 98 (untested yet). Not sure if it will run on ME or 95. If anyone wants to try, I can give some guidance in this process.
If you are interested, you can either e-mail me directly or post a request to this discussion group.
mel
The pool will seem really long, but it is fun.
Add a length or 2 to your repeats to get used to the extra time.
Do sprint 50s + a turn
Do 10x125 instead of 10x100
Do 5x225 or 5x250 instead of 5x200
Make sure you practice regular breathing, like every 2 or every 3 every time. Long course is really a lot more swimming, so the more smoothly you can practice the better. Many folks tend to take a few extra breaths around the turns, and this makes extra time doing something you won't do in a long pool.
Do breastroke if you can; there's nothing like seeing how far away that wall is!
Swim fast,
Greg
