Today, I swam the 200 yards free in 2:09.11.
This beats my previous best of 2:09.54 from April 1994.
I challenged the 2:09.54 in the past 11 years, over 20 times, many times under what I learned the hard way to be the wrong preparation, and never came close.
My result will be posted officially in the USMS databse.
I won't be able to make the 2005 Short Course Nationals, but hopefully I will make the 2005 Long Course Nationals.
The reason that I bring this success here is that there are some lessons to learn from it:
1.) to pursue virtue and excellence by meeting the intrinsic requirements that come to having a worthwhile goal (in my case, the goal is to stay in my prime intellectually and physically, for longtime), that's intelligence and tenacious work;
I immigrated to U.S. and relocated within U.S. on job skills in science to live my lifestyle;
this lifestyle comprises now, over 39 weeks of the 2004-2005 season so far, of 1,093 kilometers of training (an average of 28.025 kilometers per week, or 30,828 yards per week, no matter the holidays, tapering or illness, that includes kicking, strokes, and technique quotas), the most mileage I slowly built my late starter physiology up to in life, mostly under a Masters club with primarly college and age group swimming expertise, which I searched for and choosed;
I also cross train consistently in weights and running;
2.) I scrutinize self-indulgence and greed (to an employer who was asking me to work overtime like his Japanese employees do, even though I was ahead in schedule in a project, and who thought that I am a slave to him giving me a work visa, I stated "You know, my life doesn't depend on you." and I walked away from a near six-figures salary because it was jeopardizing my swim training; I looked for and found another) and I scrutinize good intentions backed up by feelings without hard data.
2:09.11 and staying in my prime, that's a tribute to 1.) and 2.).
Former Member
Originally posted by Punk
Of course people at 50 can be talented. A talented hardworking 50 year old swimmer would be faster than all of the other 50 year olds. A talented lazy 50 year old and a non-talented hardworking 50 year old would be closley matched, and a lazy non-talented 50 year old would be slower than everyone. (just loose categories, lots of ranges really) But whether a 50 year old could be faster than someone of a different age? Well there are some very different possibilities...
But look, ok it's not likely that someone slightly past their prime like that could break an olympic record, but you never know, things like that tend to happen when people least expect it.
Hey, a heavy, lazy, untalented 50 year old swimmer would be faster than me ... and I'm 35!:p
But I am faster than I was when I started swimming seriously two and a half years ago.
Former Member
Personally I don't think it is very interesting to think in terms of how "impressive" a PB is or try to rank one PB as more or less impressive than another. I do find the question of process interesting because it is potentially relevant to my own training. Knowing what did and didn't work for Ion, and others, gives me a basis for designing my own training and judging what will be necessary to achieve a given goal. I would be interested to hear more about what did and didn't work for Ion.
Former Member
In the past year my times for the 1000 and the 500 remained the same. Is that a failure of the (training) process, or a success in that aging tends to slow us down? Perhaps if I modify my training I can in fact lower my times next year. However, a personal best would require bettering my college times which I don't believe is possible (not that I was all that fast back then, but it's all relative).
Former Member
Originally posted by Ion Beza
I said that starting at 50 and being talented, doesn't exist, no matter the controling of the hard work, period.
You're confusing talent, which represents undeveloped potential, with actual achievement. Starting a sport late in life is a disadvantage regardless of the amount of talent an individual may possess. Hard work can achieve (and overcome) only so much.
Former Member
My interpretation of Ion's comments was that he was referring to the widely accepted fact that there is a period in your teens during which your body is able to make significant physiological adaptations that it will not undergo with the same training anytime later in life. A person who was training during this period gains an advantage that a person who didn't start until later will never attain. While I don't think there is much scientific controversy over this I don't know about the magnitude of these adaptations relative to regular training adaptations. In any case I think Ion's argument is that the person who starts at 50 has an upper limit on performance that is lower than a 50 year old who trained as a teenager.
Most of us who started later in life will never train with the intensity that is normal in age group and college swimming and I suspect this is a greater limitation. I expect that I'll be getting personal bests for years to come because there is so much room for improvement in my technique that age effects will be outweighed for some time.
I have a friend that swam exactly once in the two months between two meets we swam at and swam a 50 free seven seconds faster than me despite the fact I was training quite hard. I think that was because he has hardwired great technique into his neurons from many years of intense training years ago, it clearly wasn't due to his training in those two months! If I ever swim like he swims when he is out of shape I'll be quite satisfied.
Former Member
Originally posted by LindsayNB
Personally I don't think it is very interesting to think in terms of how "impressive" a PB is or try to rank one PB as more or less impressive than another. I do find the question of process interesting because it is potentially relevant to my own training. Knowing what did and didn't work for Ion, and others, gives me a basis for designing my own training and judging what will be necessary to achieve a given goal. I would be interested to hear more about what did and didn't work for Ion.
Exactly.
Also baron Pierre de Coubertin -the founder of the modern Olympics- stated that the process and the struggle are more important than the exact result.
Many Olympic swimmers who won gold are quoted as saying that the process beats the gold.
My past posts and my thread here give credit to the process that I was searching for and choose in a given situation.
Former Member
Originally posted by aquageek
Go ahead, rub it in, you are an early bloomer.
Actually, not exactly. I really didn't start training seriously until I was 17, so technically I missed the "window of opportunity" for maximum aerobic development.
Former Member
Originally posted by gull80
In the past year my times for the 1000 and the 500 remained the same. Is that a failure of the (training) process, or a success in that aging tends to slow us down? Perhaps if I modify my training I can in fact lower my times next year. However, a personal best would require bettering my college times which I don't believe is possible (not that I was all that fast back then, but it's all relative).
It depends on how hard you want a lifetime best.
If a lifetime best is one of your goals, you can you establish a process that is going to be time consuming.
I remember that you are from San Francisco, married now, and a medical doctor specialized in the heart.
Are your goal and process going to eat into this?
In my case, my goal to stay in mental and physical prime thru a process, that's part of a bigger goal that I have in life and that's part of my lifestyle.
Former Member
Time is one factor--what I was able to achieve in college required a lot of work. Also, it's taken me two years just to build up to 3000/day because of shoulder "issues." Fortunately my shoulder now feels better than it has in many years.
Former Member
I had over 50 lifetime bests at ages 37 and 38, including a one-minute drop in the 1650 from a personal best that was done more than ten years prior -- and I didn't start late. In the 1650 I dropped to 18:36.
Where does that put me?
Just curious...
