Hello everyone,
I'm new here, so please let me introduce myself.
I'm 34 years old, Ph.D. student with little background at competitive swimming as a child, although I've been swimming all my life for fitness and pleasure (swimming is one of my favorite things to do).
Lately I've been a little into open water swimming and participating in sprint triathlons occasionally, which brought up the competitive side in me and pushing me to improve my fitness and technique. I have two goals that currently drive me (which might be contradicting) - go under 1:00 in 100 free, and being able to hold less than 1:30/100m in longer open water events. I do feel though that if I manage to go under 1:00 the second goal will come on it's own (makes sense?).
I train alone. I have two little kids (and a third in the oven) and my schedule doesn't fit any group in my area. I am currently training 3-4 times a week and I compose my own workouts, taking ideas from wherever I can find and using my own previous experience and intuition. However, I feel that I could do better so I would be very happy to get a recommendation for a textbook which can help me be my own coach.
Now for my topic -
I find that I have 3 styles of freestyle in me: "walking" freestyle, "jogging" freestyle and "sprint" freestyle.
The walking freestyle is low cadence (~40 strokes per minute), long (about 12 strokes per length), 2-4 bit kick where I can swim easily at 1:30/100m pace. When making some effort I can increase the cadence and go 1:20/100 but not faster and I can't hold that for longer than 100.
The jogging freestyle is more rhythmic, much like the difference between walking and running. It is much easier to increase cadence and work with the legs. With this style I can do sets of 50 at 35s/50 at a perceived effort which is well bellow 80%, however I get tired really quickly and need to rest a lot to hold that pace. I believe that at this style I could go faster but not for a lot of repeats. I also feel that this where I can improve the most through fitness as my perceived effort is low and I get tired quickly. If I was to increase my effort, and being able to hold that for longer I think I could get below 1:00/100. I just don't know how to train for that, nor where to learn how to train for that.
The sprint, well, it all out, high cadence full on legs. To be honest I didn't sprint for a long time so I can't tell how fast I am now. My best times from a few years ago were about 13s/25, 28s/50, and 1:02/100. My technique was a mess back then though, so I believe I could do better now if I was as strong (and I'm not).
My analogy for walking/running feels specifically appropriate in my case since I can walk easily and slowly for a long distance, however I get tired really fast when running at any pace that is faster than walking, exactly like in my swimming.
So my questions are these:
How can I improve my "walking" cadence and/or endurance to be able to swim "walk" faster or for longer distances?
How can I improve my "jogging" capacity to be able to hold that style for longer distances?
Thanks for reading and for any replies!
Amit
