Hi. Still kind of new here. And I did a search on "400 IM" but its said my terms were too generic and not usable in search....
Anyhow, figuring the 400 IM has surely been discussed, I thought I'd start a thread about learning out how to swim it when you only get to two races a year.
I've swum the 400 IM as a target swim twice in last 6 weeks, i.e. warm up, ramp up 50s, recovery, then some splish-splash (roughly 1200 yds) then the swim. Then laying around hurting, then 200 ez. And then I'm tasting iron in my mouth and have hot, tingling toes and hands (this makes sense, I hope) for a good long while afterwards, so that's pretty much it in terms of my quality work for that work out. Getting to the pool 4 x week, it seems counter productive to do this much beyond once every 3-4 weeks or so.
With so many variables (increasing fitness, weak/strong strokes in various quarters of the race, turnover vs glide, etc.) how do you approach things, not so much in the race, but in learning how to swim it your best?
In other words, this seems like the hardest race to simply scale upwards and may demand the greatest amount of individualized strategy, but the success of any of the multitude of strategies only truly reveals itself at full on race pace.
Thanks in advance, and, again, hope this hasn't been done to death....
Parents
Former Member
Flow Phaser,
I decided last year that I wanted to try a new event. I did a 400 IM in practice one day to see if I could. I got through it and decided that was going to be my new event. So at my 1st meet I went for it. I am still not that great at it, but I went from a 6:21(Jan.) to a 5:55(May).
I was told to take the fly long and smooth. I negative split the backstroke, saving my legs on the 1st 50. Backstroke, to me, is all about how much air I can get. I stretch out the 1st 25 of the *** stroke and build the next 3 lengths. And like Blackbeard said, just give the freestyle everything you have left. It is only 4 more lengths. The last 25 I sprint as hard as I can.
As for training...
I would just work on building my endurance with 500s freestyle with an occasional 500 IM. I also do alot of IM work in practice. This summer I started working more kicking and it has helped out tremendously. If I can still kick when tired, it makes it alot easier.
good luck with the 400 IM. After my 1st one I was addicted. Just make up your mind to do it in a meet and you will be fine. You already know you can swim 400 yd/m without stopping. It is a bear of an event, but when you are done it is a great feeling.
Flow Phaser,
I decided last year that I wanted to try a new event. I did a 400 IM in practice one day to see if I could. I got through it and decided that was going to be my new event. So at my 1st meet I went for it. I am still not that great at it, but I went from a 6:21(Jan.) to a 5:55(May).
I was told to take the fly long and smooth. I negative split the backstroke, saving my legs on the 1st 50. Backstroke, to me, is all about how much air I can get. I stretch out the 1st 25 of the *** stroke and build the next 3 lengths. And like Blackbeard said, just give the freestyle everything you have left. It is only 4 more lengths. The last 25 I sprint as hard as I can.
As for training...
I would just work on building my endurance with 500s freestyle with an occasional 500 IM. I also do alot of IM work in practice. This summer I started working more kicking and it has helped out tremendously. If I can still kick when tired, it makes it alot easier.
good luck with the 400 IM. After my 1st one I was addicted. Just make up your mind to do it in a meet and you will be fine. You already know you can swim 400 yd/m without stopping. It is a bear of an event, but when you are done it is a great feeling.
