I'm curious how people go about deciding which events they will train for and enter in meets. Do people pick events they enjoy swimming or events they do well at or events they think they can improve at or...? Is there any way to determine which events you are likely to be best at? I've always thought of myself as a distance person, mostly because I've never been particularly fast, but as my technique improves I seem to be getting faster in the shorter distances more than the longer distances, even though I am training for distance! After doing some timed sprints this week my coach told me he thought he could reduce my 50fr time by 3-5 seconds if I wanted to train for that. Naturally that idea appeals to me but I had never considered concentrating on free sprints before. There seem to be several ways I could go that look promising and I'm not sure what to concentrate on, or even on what basis to choose!
I'm also curious to what extent people train specifically for their specialty events. A lot of the people in our club only swim during the club workouts and so don't really tailor their training for specific events, at least to the extent that those of us who also train on our own have the opportunity to do.
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Former Member
Hey Craig, I'm curious how you came to view yourself as a middle distance swimmer. Did you get there by somehow determining that was your strength or did you decide that is what you wanted to do and subsequently train for it?
I think I have been thinking of myself as a distance swimmer as a combined result of the fact I used to do triathlons, and last summer I got into open water swimming, and when I started looking at what to enter in meets the distance events gave me a better chance to place, although more due to fewer competitors than talent on my part. :) But as I said, with training I seem to be improving more in the shorter distances making me wonder if I have more potential there. Right now I'm starting to think of myself as a middle distance swimmer, but I'm not sure I'm not just moving through that on my way to shorter distances...
I've also taken up butterfly, again partly motivated by the fact there are less competitors and partly purely for the challenge and learning experience.
Hey Craig, I'm curious how you came to view yourself as a middle distance swimmer. Did you get there by somehow determining that was your strength or did you decide that is what you wanted to do and subsequently train for it?
I think I have been thinking of myself as a distance swimmer as a combined result of the fact I used to do triathlons, and last summer I got into open water swimming, and when I started looking at what to enter in meets the distance events gave me a better chance to place, although more due to fewer competitors than talent on my part. :) But as I said, with training I seem to be improving more in the shorter distances making me wonder if I have more potential there. Right now I'm starting to think of myself as a middle distance swimmer, but I'm not sure I'm not just moving through that on my way to shorter distances...
I've also taken up butterfly, again partly motivated by the fact there are less competitors and partly purely for the challenge and learning experience.
