Anyone up for a challenge?

Back to the challenge: I don't thinking breathing will be my problem on my goal of 350 fly; it is going to be the fact that I am heavy and trying to move forward with some upward movement is going to create a pile of drag. This will be the time when I wished I weighed 130!! In the way of encouragement, the second meet I swam in I entered the 1500m free. The woman next to me swam the whole thing fly! She was heavy and I seem to recall being told that she had bad knees and couldn't swim free. Remember, Vickie Keith swam across Lake Ontario swimming fly! If you don't try to swim it like an extended 50 I bet you will do it no problem, you just need to adjust your stroke. I have never done more than 200m, but I think I could do more as long as I got and kept the rhythm.

Thanks Lindsay for that example. I guess it comes down to a person who is willing to design a challenge, and then train for it, will succeed. Of course I didn't say how long it will take, but I will let everyone know the monthly progress; don't want to bog down people with the aches and pains, however, there will probably be funny and strange things I encounter. I truly encourage people to step outside of their comfort box and try something different and unusual from their norm. I do SO MUCH FREE, I need a break from it and fly will challenge my body in many different ways. I look forward to getting strong enough to have a stroke adjustment!! Onward.... Donna

Donna, I learned a trick for swimming distance fly and it works very well for me. The trick is to add in one or more extra kicks to each arm stroke. Personally, I use a three-beat kick for my distance swims. If you aren't really interested in swimming against Mary T, then the time doesn't matter so much as preserving your energy. What the three-beat kick does for me is to allow me to slow down my rep rate significantly so that I don't go into oxygen debt BUT it keeps the rear end near the surface of the water so that I am not sliding backwards and downwards into the water when I breathe (every stroke). I don't have a very powerful kick, so there is no real loss of oxygen there, but just enough to keep the body nearly horizontal in the water. At last year's state meet in Colorado, I swam the 1000 fly, as a joke. I had no problem breaking 19 minutes and it was a pretty easy swim for me. The biggest kick I had was the astonished look on the face of my lap counter who told me that he 'didn't approve of 1000 yard butterfly swims...' I hadn't warned him in advance. Have fun with it. -- mel

Mel, Oh my!! A 1000 fly? and I thought a 350 yd was plenty. Way to go. I always love it when a swimmer gets in and swims something out of the norm like your thousand fly. I will be doing a lot of underwater dolphin kick and I have a relatively good one, or at least the timing with the arms is good, so I will work with adding an extra kick. Like you said, this is not competition, it is the distance I am interested in. Probably, some single arm fly also, quite a bit of it probably. A work in progress. Just as long as I don't have another birthday from start to finish (LOL). This is going to be quite a challenge for this swimmer; that's why I created it. Do you have a new challenge for yourself? Donna

Well, this year I have aged up to 65 for the yards course, so no more stupid swims in the near future. Have to concentrate on things with a high rate of return. Just back to the usual 200 br, 200 fl, 1000 fr, 400 im and some other serious stuff. I'll wait until I'm 69 before doing another distance fly. As Peter knows, my goal is fly for the 1650... -- mel

Donna- you may not know also that Mel swims these interesting challenges at an altitude that would have me gasping like a landed carp.

Peter/Mel: I am gasping and I am at sea level. Mel: your challenges make mine look pitiful in comparison except 350 is still too far from my point of view, but I will work on it. And I am a younster in your books, 59. But I refuse, absolutely refuse, to butterfrog, I want to do this fly swim the way it was designed to be done with dolphin kick. I may butterfrog when I am Mel's age, but it is too soon for me to cop out. Surely, Mel, if you are in the vicinity of the forum, please tell me that doing a swim like this will help me to develop strength for my upcoming 18-19 mile swim in August of 2008!! If you can do a 1000 fly, maybe you should come down for the island to island swim that year. Donna

Hi Donna, I really like the results from swimming a lot of fly. My core is way stronger since I put fly into my normal training routine. In my usual training schedule I swim 4 X 2 hour swims per week. One of those days has fly as a major component and I do anywhere from 500 to 1000 yards in the (typically) 4000-5000 yard workout. Sometimes I do the Jenny Thompson swims (a bunch of 25s) with a two beat kick and breathing every other stroke. Sometimes I do the distance swims where I use the three beat kick and stretch out my stroke. For these I will do either 5 X 200 or 2 X 500. My training pool is at 9000 feet and I can't remember ever doing a 1000 fly here. The swim that I mentioned to you was in Denver, at a meager 5280 feet (almost sea level!). As for the distance swim, I'm not an open-water swimmer, except in my fantasies. When I used to live in Hawaii I would regularly train for the Rough Water swim but just never got around to swimming it. I never had trouble snorkeling or body surfing but swimming was another matter. I'm POSITIVE that there is a school of great white sharks that has, like a blood hound, been trained in the scent of my body oils. They will find me anywhere in the world where I'm swimming in open water (even inland fresh-water lakes, I believe). This is weird because I'm not nervous around barracudas or moray eels, both of which have shared my swim space many times. Otherwise, I'd be happy to join you for your very ambitious swim. Wish I had the nerve. Perhaps I could arrange to be in another body of open water somewhere else at the time to be certain that ALL the GW sharks are looking for me and not in your vicinity. -- mel

By the way, I am incapable of swimming fly with the breaststroke kick. The back end just sinks immediately to the bottom. I learned fly when I swam in college and just learned it with the dolphin kick. -- mel

Mel, :bow::bow:I am in awe of your accomplishments to a life of LD fly and long swim training. I have never been a person to take the easy way out of anything; it is not my nature, for the effort and journey makes the accomplishment more memorable--forever. My fly training starts the day after I swim a mile in our triathlon here; don't want to start it before, it is getting too close to a taper, an older women's type of taper. I just recently re-started swimming (Jan. 15); I needed some months off, so I have great respect for your long hours of swimming; I am now approaching the 4 mile mark, non-stop, ocean only, and am totally trashed for a day or so, but hey, this is how we build our engines!! And we have no great whites here unless they have your name and number and follow your plane down here. We have reef sharks and some tigers, but in the stretch of water that I will be trying to cross, we have more Tuna and Whale Sharks than anything. The currents are murder; four of them collide at the 10 mile mark (uh-oh), that is my big issue, so come on down, swim part way with me (a couple of miles), and enjoy the boat ride while I get sunburned and suffer toward my goal. And no, I won't do one stroke of fly on the way; I don't have dementia yet, my faculties are still in place as of today. Onward....Fly training starts March 19th!! Donna