I'm interested to know what kind of workouts people are doing who are preparing for 200 back, long or short course. I'm interested primarily because I'm pretty much incapable of approaching the distances and volume that Ande has been doing recently.
What are the rest of you doing? Are you gunning for a top 10 time, a National Qualifying Time, a PB, or are you just trying to stave off a precipitous decline in speed? What is the longest interval you'll do with any frequency? Do you ever get up to the 800's that Ande is posting?
Tom, my team did a test set every other wednesday in the three months leading up to SCY Nationals. We started at 12x75 on 1:05, and dropped two repeats off and added 5 seconds to the interval each week. Mollie (SwimmieAvsFan) did hers all backstroke to train for her fave event, the 200 back. I can't recall what times she was holding for those, but her nationals 200 back was I believe a USMS best, and lifetime #2.
I'll be sure to encourage her to weigh in on this topic - though most of her training partners (ie me) train for mid-distance free, she will tend to tinker with things slighty to fit in her backstroke.
For my part, I do enjoy the occasional 200s fly & back, and for practicing, tend to do really focus on working hard on my IM and IM-order sets, especially the fly and backstroke parts. My thought process in the Fly's in the last couple years is to not do much more than 25s and 50s in practice, and finishing up many a workout with a 50 fast fly from the blocks (kind of a cheap way of adding ~150y to a workout).
Whatever I am doing seems to work - my Nationals 50fly and both 50 back relay splits were lifetime bests; and in the 200 fly, had an 8 second timedrop in my PB over two swims.
Tom, my team did a test set every other wednesday in the three months leading up to SCY Nationals. We started at 12x75 on 1:05, and dropped two repeats off and added 5 seconds to the interval each week. Mollie (SwimmieAvsFan) did hers all backstroke to train for her fave event, the 200 back. I can't recall what times she was holding for those, but her nationals 200 back was I believe a USMS best, and lifetime #2.
I'll be sure to encourage her to weigh in on this topic - though most of her training partners (ie me) train for mid-distance free, she will tend to tinker with things slighty to fit in her backstroke.
For my part, I do enjoy the occasional 200s fly & back, and for practicing, tend to do really focus on working hard on my IM and IM-order sets, especially the fly and backstroke parts. My thought process in the Fly's in the last couple years is to not do much more than 25s and 50s in practice, and finishing up many a workout with a 50 fast fly from the blocks (kind of a cheap way of adding ~150y to a workout).
Whatever I am doing seems to work - my Nationals 50fly and both 50 back relay splits were lifetime bests; and in the 200 fly, had an 8 second timedrop in my PB over two swims.
