Seems inevitable, no? Even though my practice times seem to be pretty consistent with intervals I was able to hold 5 to 7 years ago (mid to early
30's), now that I am 40, my races just seem to get slower. Its an odd scenario to be in. As an age grouper and into college, the older you got, the more you trained, the faster you swam. Now, it seems, mother nature is kicking things in reverse. While I still love to train, I'm finding less incentive to compete.
Anyone else come to this conclusion?
I was an age group swimmer and have never come near those times. As a Masters swimmer, I had my best times at 50. Various health problems followed, and at 66 (and beyond)I won't get back to my times at 50.
June Krauser gave me the best advice...keep track of times within each new age group, but don't look back. I find that very helpful. I can value a pr for this age group and not worry about what I used to be able to do. June also said to keep swimming new events, and you have a whole new set of best times.
I enjoy competing and don't want to give that up because I am slower.
June also said to keep swimming new events, and you have a whole new set of best times.
that is a good idea, but for me, it means distance freestyle, 200 fly and the 400 IM ... the 4-IM I can deal with ... the others, I am not so sure.
Part of the solution is to do race pace sets in workout to keep up your competitive fire. If you don't push your body to do more swimming at insanely fast speeds, your body won't know what to do at a swim meet because you've only been training aerobically.
Dara Torres aside, one reason I have found that people can get faster in races as they get older is because they continually work on race pace swimming (such as broken 200s), or if you're a sprinter, doing a good deal of sprinting to keep the muscles firing.
Part of the solution is to do race pace sets in workout to keep up your competitive fire. If you don't push your body to do more swimming at insanely fast speeds, your body won't know what to do at a swim meet because you've only been training aerobically.
Dara Torres aside, one reason I have found that people can get faster in races as they get older is because they continually work on race pace swimming (such as broken 200s), or if you're a sprinter, doing a good deal of sprinting to keep the muscles firing.
Now, I'm only entering my third year of competing, but I seem to get faster every year and I'm now 46. But I did more sprinting than aerobic work in the past year, which I think helped. And this last six months, I've been doing much more race pace work as Jeff suggests. I think it definitely paid off for me at my last meet. It hurts like hell, and it's less yardage, but it's worth it. But I can see there might be a limit on improvement at some point without expanding into other events and such. Try not to let that stop you competing, if you enjoy it.
Just in general, it seems like changing your training in some significant way might yield better results. More race pace swimming, cross training, weights, core drylands? Improving SDKs? Or are you already doing all these things? Maybe changing focus events or really focusing on just a couple events in training?
I also think that are bodies just do age; we are, to some degree, fighting the aging process with training. So, it's probably a good idea to keep a set of PBs in each masters age group. I certainly plan on doing that. Although, George, 40 is NOT elderly!!! That's a terrible mentality. :thhbbb:
My times at 49 are faster than they were at 46, at least for distances of 200 and up. I attribute this to good coaching and training partners. In 2004 Tom Wolf told me that he was swimming faster in his 50's than he was in his 40's. Currently that is my goal for 2008 when I age up. I'm not going down without a fight.
I beleive if you were not a top ten swimmer in your youth you can always get faster until you reach the age of decline. I was faster at 37 then I was when I was in my twenties.
I read an article, which I can't find now, that says physiologically, sprint performance peaks in the mid-to-late twenties, and endurance in the mid thirties. Of course there are other variables such as how highly trained a person is, improvements in technique, etc.
This doesn't seem to be true of swimmers in the real world. Jason Lezak, Neil Walker, Gary Hall, and of course Dara Torres are all sprinters. I'm not aware of any 30-ish or 30+ swimmers competing at the top level in distance events.
One thing I noticed about myself after returning to swimming 3 years ago after a 25+ year time off - my racing speeds in sprints isn't too far off my high school times but my training speeds are not even close. That tells me I have good power/speed, but not very good fitness. And restoring fitness lost decades ago is proving to be very difficult for me.
