A little background: Today I swam in a mini-meet to get a "baseline" time for my 200 scy breaststroke. I'm still very young (26) got back into swimming in October after letting my weight and fitness go to the birds and the last time I truly swam competitively I was 21 (from the time I was seven). Based on some posts on Ande's thread on PB through the years it seems like I should eventually be able to come within striking distance of some of my old PBs. That being said, I've got quite a long way to go but am making very good quick progress.
In late October I started with a 03:26.71 in my 200 *** (at a meet). Today I swam a 03:13.12 (I was shooting for 3:16, so I am psyched). I have only been able to swim about 45 minutes 5 days a week and was not training for the 200 ***, just getting some general stroke work in. I should be able to swim for 50-60 minutes 5 days a week for a while through July. I could potentially add 2 dryland sessions to my schedule. I would like to focus on the 200 *** and get my time to sub 3:00.00 by July. This is no where near close to my former best time in the 200 (2:28.06 but I also did not train for the 200 *** then).
Additionally, I've lost 15 pounds since October (12 to go) and have made significant endurance progress. I figure just loosing the weight and gaining my fitness back will be a huge help on the 200 without changing a thing with my practices.
So my questions:
1) Currently I am not splitting my 200 correctly. Today I was 8 seconds slower in the second 100 than the first 100. I feel that holding back a little on the first 50 could have helped on the rest of the event and just with some proper splitting I could have gone 3-4 seconds faster. So, how can I help to acheive this proper splitting? Are there particular drills or sets I can work on in practice? I have a fear of going out too slow and it throwing off my pace for the rest of the 200.
2) Have I set a reasonable goal time, or am I possibly selling myself short? It's hard to set goals when you're just getting the swing of things again. There is a specific meet on my Birthday that I would like to swim that sub 3:00 at. It's taken me 3 months to drop 10 seconds and I think I could keep up this time dropping pace for a little while. Should I really be setting my sub 3:00 goal for the end of April? What are people's experiences with early master's goals?
Sorry for the long post, I've got a lot on my mind at the moment. Generally I'd like to just hear more about specific things than can be done in practice to help split a 200 non-IM properly and how to set time goals when you're still testing your body's new limits and gaining lost fitness.
Thanks!
Michelle
It sounds to me that rather than practicing my full stroke breaststroke in longer distances such as 200 or 300 and try to drop the pace by getting to swim full out, I should really try holding on to the pace I want in intervals and slowly dropping the rest. Maybe I'll add in here my own theory that in order to get in practice swimming the full 200, I should be doing sets of 200 or 300 but they should not be sets of full *** and should be drills with full turns.
It sounds like taking the split 200 approach at the correct pace will be a much faster way to drop my time than say sets of 200's trying to increase the speed. Has anyone tried it the other way around, or done some combination of this?
It also seems to match another theory I have heard which is that breaststrokers should swim more drill than full stroke in practice.
It sounds to me that rather than practicing my full stroke breaststroke in longer distances such as 200 or 300 and try to drop the pace by getting to swim full out, I should really try holding on to the pace I want in intervals and slowly dropping the rest. Maybe I'll add in here my own theory that in order to get in practice swimming the full 200, I should be doing sets of 200 or 300 but they should not be sets of full *** and should be drills with full turns.
It sounds like taking the split 200 approach at the correct pace will be a much faster way to drop my time than say sets of 200's trying to increase the speed. Has anyone tried it the other way around, or done some combination of this?
It also seems to match another theory I have heard which is that breaststrokers should swim more drill than full stroke in practice.
