you're probably spending too much time on technique
I'd work on speed, SDK and conditioning
I'm going to do something that my wife hates -- agreeing while seeming to disagree.
I think that it's important to focus some time on technique... say, maybe on your warmup/recovery sets or set aside one day per week for it. That being said, you don't really figure out whether your technique is improving without doing fast/hard swims.
IMO, the best time to find out how effective your technique is is during the back half of a tough set or swim, when your muscles are burning and you just want to finish. Awareness becomes pretty acute in those moments, and if you focus that hyper-awareness on the technique you've been working on instead of on your pain, it pays nicely.
I have been trying to work on speed for fly, in fact I'm finding it hard to swim it anything but fast!
Lindsay,
I have found there is a "stall speed" for fly - you have to go at a certain speed (not EZ) in order not to flounder.
To work on technique for fly, use fins - you will have easier speed and can work on stroke. Also, one-arm fly is one of the drills that actually works for stroke improvement.
To do a decent 50 fly (age relative), you don't have to do much actual fly training - rather than sit out sets, swim 3 or 4 stokes on each length then switch to free. Build up the number of fly strokes/length as your technique/fitness improve.
As for 100/200 fly, the fall-off in times for the over 40's is far greater than for free even if technique is perfect. Distance fly is tough.
Ian
Bernard, despite whatever advantage he may have in "muscle," is an elite swimmer primarily because of his efficiency in the water.
Among other things...
Those splits look like a much better balanced swim. Fly and free are close together like someone else mentioned and your *** is real good.
I think I need to learn how to *** tired. I think *** is tuff when you are tired.
Why is it that I can qualify for the 50m free, be 6 sec off in the 100, 25 sec off in the 200, and 65 sec off in the 400?
If it were only technique, I would think the percentage to be equal. Conclusions?
Don't know that you can really draw conclusions from this info.
Are these LCM times? There is no turn in a 50. If you have crappy turns, they're going to bite you more as you swim longer races. Do you not breathe in the 50 (or not much?) Maybe you have a badly integrated breath that kills you on longer swims. Do you 6-beat kick the 50, but then the oxygen drain annihilates you on longer swims and you're down to a barely visible flutter on the 400?
You probably are a sprinter, like Ande says. Didn't you say once that you ran the 200 and 400 in track? So you're likely very strong. While Paul is right that no one can be at the top while muscling out distances, I totally agree with Kirk. Especially for those of us who do not have a swimming background, you can muscle through shorter races a lot more than the longer ones. I betcha you're relying on your strength and natural athleticism (and running background) in the 50 and inefficiency is hurting you in the longer events. I'd work on technique, but more importantly, holding technique when your body is failing... ie., descending sets, maintaining stroke count, coming up past the flags off every turn, sticking with your breathing pattern, keeping your kick at whatever cadence you're shooting for, etc etc at the END of workout...
Back to your original question, my IM is comparable in speed to yours. For what it's worth, here's my splits from an unrested SCM meet last December.
Colburn, Carrie 33 Nwsc-Im-IL
3:07.38
42.23 1:33.31 (51.08) 2:26.74 (53.43) 3:07.38 (40.64)
I am not a flyer or a backstroker or (anymore) a breaststroker. I am definitely a drop dead sprinter. Perhaps the 200 IM is not my strong suit? :) But it is a fun race. By comparison, my 200 free is somewhere in the upper 2:30's for SCM, though it's been a looooong time since I've swam it SCM.
I think you killed yourself with that fly split. Make sure you breathe enough on the fly!! It is so tempting to take it out without enough air. Then it just looks like you paid for it on the rest of your race.
You should really think about swimming the 50 fly at your next meet! I bet you might surprise yourself. :)
Thanks Ian,
I will try the "few strokes of fly, switch to free" approach in workout. I don't know that I'll give up my selective skipping approach entirely as I feel that our workouts often fall into the almost continuous and therefore medium speed category. Most people on my team seem to think that getting more than 15s of rest is too much, I don't know how many times I've told people if you think you're getting too much rest you aren't swimming hard enough!
When I swim on my own I often do this workout:
WU: 10x100m free, alt swim and pull
1000m of fly work with fins:
5x50m one arm fly - 25m right, 25m left focusing on some technique point
5x50m of N right, N left, rest of the way full for N=5,4,3,2,1
500m full fly in mostly twenty-fives, some fifties near race pace with lots of rest holding technique
WD: 200m easy free
I could never do that amount of fly without the fins. I do worry about becoming a fin addict but so far it seems to be helping with being able to do enough repetitions to solidify the technique changes I am working on.
Hmm, as I think about it, I often do those 25m flys on about 18s, and the last few 50m flys I've done have been around 36s when I concentrate on technique (my best time last year, just going for it was 34.67LCM so this is a little discouraging) which makes me wonder if maybe I've trained-in a particular tempo. Maybe if I concentrate on doing 17 and then 16 for 25m my races will start coming in more where I would like?
To throw in a token on-topic thought, if one thinks of fly as analogous to an inefficient freestyle technique in terms energy requirements, which I think makes sense, then the faster drop off in times that one sees for fly would likely occur for someone with an inefficient "power through it" freestyle, so it could be that Robert (and I) have such severe drop offs because of inefficient technique rather than because we are drop dead sprinters.
Looking at Robert's 200m free splits they remind me of the sort of splits I was doing before someone convinced me that I could take it out harder and just how hard and "painful" a 200 is supposed to be. When I really went after it and ignored the fact I felt like I was dying I dropped several seconds. But I also realized the 200 is really unpleasant! Perhaps Robert is also being overly conservative. Similarly I took a few seconds off my 100 when I stopped trying to pace the first 50 and treated it more like a 50m race with more breaths followed by 25m of really go for it, followed by 25m of give it everything you've got left. I think non-late-bloomers sometimes take the ability to swim through the "pain" they acquired when younger for granted and underestimate how much of a barrier this is for a late-onset swimmer whose every natural instinct is to pace to avoid "dying".
Looking at Robert's 200m free splits they remind me of the sort of splits I was doing before someone convinced me that I could take it out harder and just how hard and "painful" a 200 is supposed to be. When I really went after it and ignored the fact I felt like I was dying I dropped several seconds. But I also realized the 200 is really unpleasant!
Yea, I heard an elite swimmer say that he was blacking out in the last 50 of his 200. I've never gone there.....yet.
... can achieve 50m free times in the 30s range by "muscling" our way through it while the same inefficient effort can't be extended out to the 200m range? That inefficient technique will result in bigger drop offs as distance increases...
Isn't the opposite more likely to be true? Resistance in the water increases exponentially with speed: greater speed means exponentially greater resistance.
Isn't the opposite more likely to be true? Resistance in the water increases exponentially with speed: greater speed means exponentially greater resistance.
I suspect that one has to look at the energy systems in use and their limits, and also keep in mind that we are talking about moderately fast swims (30s 50m) not elite level performances. Again, look at butterfly which is an inefficient stroke relative to freestyle and the drop offs are larger than for freestyle. And of course for small differences in speed and large differences in efficiency the exponential factor may not dominate.
