Hi all,
My names Matt, 34 year old from Vancouver BC. I raced/trained from 7 to 17 years old, then burnt out and quit swimming. Took up mountain biking (and proceeded to wreck my shoulders wiping out with poor form -never did learn the tuck and roll) and have been doing that since.
About a year ago, I restarted swimming as an alternate to the gym, and because the trails were snowed in. Now Im thinking about racing again, and may do so soon (my goal is to go under 2:00 in 200 free SCM).
My question is this: I have lots of pool time (UBC aquatic centre), but I most often wind up in the 25 yard diving tank for my workouts as the 25m lanes are usually an absolute gong show. If I want to race in meters, should I make every effort to train meters, or is yards OK? Is there a disadvantage going from yards to meters?
Thanks!
Matt
P.S. I gotta say, this is a great board. Lots of great workouts, advice, good attitudes. Thanks again.
Thanks! When you say you count your strokes to make sure youre staying long, does this mean that youre trying to assure that youre not spazzing out and spinning your wheels? If you train scy (and presumably have an optimal stroke count) do you have to re-calibrate in the scm pool? Is this done by doing some races for time pre-meet?
M
Yes, I'm trying not to have my stroke rate too high to conserve energy. In all honesty, in each of these distances, I'm generally good counting strokes for the first ~75% of the race and then I just go hard, regardless of stroke length and rate, for the last ~25%.
I do have to calibrate my stroke for SCM from SCY. It's usually only about 1 stroke difference for me, but that actually is meaningful as it means I generally need to change my breathing pattern as well as which arm is the one driving me through a turn. As far as training for this, I generally do hard/fast swims in a SCM pool before the meet. I also try to swim a few SCM meets before I go to the meet where I really want to swim fast. For example, this past fall, my peak meet was in December, but I swam in one meet in each of October and November in SCM.
Thanks! When you say you count your strokes to make sure youre staying long, does this mean that youre trying to assure that youre not spazzing out and spinning your wheels? If you train scy (and presumably have an optimal stroke count) do you have to re-calibrate in the scm pool? Is this done by doing some races for time pre-meet?
M
Yes, I'm trying not to have my stroke rate too high to conserve energy. In all honesty, in each of these distances, I'm generally good counting strokes for the first ~75% of the race and then I just go hard, regardless of stroke length and rate, for the last ~25%.
I do have to calibrate my stroke for SCM from SCY. It's usually only about 1 stroke difference for me, but that actually is meaningful as it means I generally need to change my breathing pattern as well as which arm is the one driving me through a turn. As far as training for this, I generally do hard/fast swims in a SCM pool before the meet. I also try to swim a few SCM meets before I go to the meet where I really want to swim fast. For example, this past fall, my peak meet was in December, but I swam in one meet in each of October and November in SCM.
