Has anyone heard of saving their kick for the second half of the two hundred to draw lactic acid towards the leg muscles? I recall reading somewhere that this would allow the arms to remain relatively free of acid build up so they don't tighten up so much on the final laps.
In sprint races, the fifty and hundred are over before you know it. The two hundred however has always posed a challenge because if you go out too fast, there's a price to pay towards the 150 mark. I am working on getting the first hundred paced fast but easy, and then saving some steam for the last seventy five. (Almost like an attempt to even split the 200.)
Any thoughts on race pace strategies would be appreciated.
this is a topic i have frequently pondered.
if you look at the extremes, there are two basic strategies:
1) go out very fast and try to hang on (advantage: you don't have to worry about creating a time deficit on the first 100 that you can't make up no matter how fast your final kick; disadvantage: premature death on the final 50.)
2) go out smooth and try to burn through at the end (advantage: not as much chance of dying at the end; disadvantage: you may not be able to compensate at the end for too leisurely an early pace.)
my teammate bill swears by the first strategy. he recently went out in a 53 and came back in a 1:01 for a decent overall time.
i find i do much better with the second strategy. my best 200 in the last year, i went out in a 57 and came back in a 58 for a pr at age 50.
perhaps the difference is that bill is more of a sprinter, and I am more of a distance swimmer--he knows his best chance for an optimal time is to make his speed work for him. i, on the other hand, know that my "sprinting" pace isn't all that fast anyhow, and so knocking myself out early won't give me much of an early advantage.
i guess for me the answer is to listen to my body. swim as fast as i can from the get go without getting to that point where i feel lactic acid starting to flow. if i can make it through the first 100 feeling okay, then i start to up the effort on the 3rd 50, then pretty much all out sprint the final 50. in terms of kicking, i haven't paid too much attention to this aspect of the swim, but suspect i keep this moderate till the second half of the race, and really kick hard the final 50.
Thirty years ago in college the mantra was "go out hard and die like a man". I am not sure it worked very well for me then, and
I'm sure it doesn't work for me now.....but everyone is different.
A very successful race pacing strategy for the 200 free (the other strokes pose different type of challenge) is to back-off slightly in the second 50 (less kick) and then descend the 3rd and 4th. Some prefer the third 50 to be the fastest others, who have more confidence in their ability to descend, the last 50 is the fastest.
I think a very good split is somwhere between 1-2 seconds (I prefer something like 2 seconds but Thornton's recommendatin of 1 second might be better)
My recent best 200 at age 50 was 1:57 my splits:
27, 30, 29, 30 (don't remember fractions)
My first 50 was about 2.5 seconds off my p.r. for a 50 and the 100 was also about 2.5 seconds off my p.r. for a 100.
Note: I train 3+ times week for a total of about 10,000 yards. You might be more aggressive with the first 50 if train more and/or are younger. Personally, I would still go ahead 2.5 seconds slower than p.r. for the first 50 and just push harder in the 2 or 3 50 if I had more training under my belt.
