200 Challenge: Goal time, roadmap and status updates

Roadmap: 1. Increase base Endurance with loong swims. (sets of 2000's maybe?) IMHO this will be a waste of time. Doing 2000's is going to help diddly squat with your 200. The only thing you are going to get better at is doing 2000's at a slow pace. Think about it. Why would you want to be training 2000's which take thirty or so minutes when, at race time, you are only going to be in the water for just over 2 minutes. It would be like Usain Bolt saying he is going to train some marathons to build up base endurance for his 100. Base endurance here just means slow swimming, but what you really need to be doing is some fast swims where you get as close as possible to your goal time in practice. Rather think of it this way. Your goal time is 2:10. That means you need to average 32:50 per 50. You need to train your body to know what it feels like to swim at this pace. Try doing some broken 200's (with 10 seconds rest at the 50) where you go under your goal time for each 50. Or break it at the 100. Good splits here would be a 1:03/1:06 or a 1:02/1:07. Once again, rest for 10, but this time it will be much harder. Finally, do 200's for time in practice. Get someone to time you. (Or time yourself if you can. I do it with my watch but it slows me down, momentarily, at the tun. I push the lap button as I am pushing off the wall in streamline). You need to get your splits for the 50's or at least the 100's. Now you can work out where you went too slow or, perhaps, where you need to speed up. Finally, you can work on things like starts and turns. Especially turns. If your turns are slow you could be losing up to half a second or more each time. That could add up to almost 4 seconds over a short course race. The difference between a 2:13 and a 2:09 perhaps.

Roadmap: 1. Increase base Endurance with loong swims. (sets of 2000's maybe?) IMHO this will be a waste of time. Doing 2000's is going to help diddly squat with your 200. The only thing you are going to get better at is doing 2000's at a slow pace. Think about it. Why would you want to be training 2000's which take thirty or so minutes when, at race time, you are only going to be in the water for just over 2 minutes. It would be like Usain Bolt saying he is going to train some marathons to build up base endurance for his 100. Base endurance here just means slow swimming, but what you really need to be doing is some fast swims where you get as close as possible to your goal time in practice. Rather think of it this way. Your goal time is 2:10. That means you need to average 32:50 per 50. You need to train your body to know what it feels like to swim at this pace. Try doing some broken 200's (with 10 seconds rest at the 50) where you go under your goal time for each 50. Or break it at the 100. Good splits here would be a 1:03/1:06 or a 1:02/1:07. Once again, rest for 10, but this time it will be much harder. Finally, do 200's for time in practice. Get someone to time you. (Or time yourself if you can. I do it with my watch but it slows me down, momentarily, at the tun. I push the lap button as I am pushing off the wall in streamline). You need to get your splits for the 50's or at least the 100's. Now you can work out where you went too slow or, perhaps, where you need to speed up. Finally, you can work on things like starts and turns. Especially turns. If your turns are slow you could be losing up to half a second or more each time. That could add up to almost 4 seconds over a short course race. The difference between a 2:13 and a 2:09 perhaps.