Hello Everyone,
I have been back in the pool for about a year now and am enjoying myself. With a busy schedule and two young swimmers, I rarely have time to swim Masters meets. But when the opportunity presents itself, I dodge the meet quite effectively.
Here is the reason. I have absolutely no confidence in my racing ability. In my workouts, I can lead the lane for the intermediate swiimmers and easily make 100 frees LCM on the 1:35 but many of those behind me can blow me away on sprint day when we do 50s and 100s.
I had my strokes taped and have been able to make a few nice adjustments to my freestyle that allows me to swim with much less tension in my arms and provides a greater catch with a higher elbow. I notice that I am able to go faster with much less effort now. Thus, when we do 200s and longer, I can hang with the faster swimmers. It seems the longer we go, the better I do. I am 5' 7" and about 160 pounds so I am not tall but have a pretty solid chest and shoulders.
I find that if I tell myself to go 80% during a sprint, my time is perhaps only a few seconds slower than if I tell myself to go 100%. My stroke is much stronger if I go slower and thus more efficient. But I am still stuck in the mindset that unless I go all out, I will not achieve max speed.
I realize that I am talking about pacing and my own mental block but I was wondering if anyone has had the same problem with acheiving their potential when there is a disparity between workout speed and race results.
My coach keeps prodding me to enter meets but I resist. But I am tired of being a "workout warrior".
Any input would be appreciated.
Rob
My team does mostly distance and mid-distance stuff. We do sprints once in a while, but not as much as I like. I am sort of training for sprint breaststroke events, and I would like to be able to do them more because--like Redbird so accurately put it--the experience in a meet is vastly different than doing it in practice. It kind of sucks, but the coaches are pretty stubborn about people doing something different.
That's why I train on my own.I do best with race pace BR swims and drills.Not many(any) coaches focus on those workouts.
Re: Rob's question,I agree,enter some distance stuff,you may not be very"fast twitch".I'd say see if you can get good at Fly,BK or BR 200s and 400 IMs.At many meets around here there are lots of entries in the distance free events,but not so many in the 200 strokes(for some insane reason we get many 400 IM entries sometimes,but it is a good event to say you have swum.)
My team does mostly distance and mid-distance stuff. We do sprints once in a while, but not as much as I like. I am sort of training for sprint breaststroke events, and I would like to be able to do them more because--like Redbird so accurately put it--the experience in a meet is vastly different than doing it in practice. It kind of sucks, but the coaches are pretty stubborn about people doing something different.
That's why I train on my own.I do best with race pace BR swims and drills.Not many(any) coaches focus on those workouts.
Re: Rob's question,I agree,enter some distance stuff,you may not be very"fast twitch".I'd say see if you can get good at Fly,BK or BR 200s and 400 IMs.At many meets around here there are lots of entries in the distance free events,but not so many in the 200 strokes(for some insane reason we get many 400 IM entries sometimes,but it is a good event to say you have swum.)
