Rich Abrahams- Atlanta

Rich Here's a few questions for you when I look at the history of your top 10 times over time USMS Top Ten Swims by Richard T Abrahams It appears to me that in a few cases you have years that you tend to emphasize more than others. Particularly just before & just after aging up. I'd love to hear your comments. Did your times from Nats surprise you or did you pretty much expect to be in those ranges? Were your spring 2010 workout times indicating you were on the verge of a breakthrough for Nats? If I asked you when you were 45 yrs old if you thought there was any chance you could go 22.10 in the 50 fr 20 years later as a 65 year old? What would you have said? What do you need to do to go faster? What difference do you think a full blue seventy provides over a jammer for you? Ande Ande, To answer your questions: Like a lot of others, I train with more focus and have more developed goals in the years that I age up. Any other pattern is coincidental. However, a great venue/facility definitely increases focus and also whether or not my training partners are also going to nationals, worlds, etc. Sometimes it’s related to my health, work or family situation (sounds familiar?). From the time I was 49-52 I had serious shoulder problems that even an operation didn’t resolve. During that time I became devoted to hard core mountain biking and I feel it really helped my overall strength and aerobic/anaerobic conditioning. When I came back at age 53 (1998) I had a great year both short course and long course. Since then I’ve had shoulder operations in Feb. 2001 (right) and Sept. 2005(left) that were successful. I also had a minor knee operation in Sept. 2006. I find it very difficult to fully prepare physically and psychologically for SCY, LCM and SCM in the same year. Actually, I’ve never done it successfully but I’m going to try this year Re my times in Atlanta: they were within what I knew I could do if I didn’t make too many mistakes. When I went a 22.3 in Austin in 2008 I had a mediocre start, a horrible breakout (way too deep on my first stroke), and had a glide finish. In Atlanta I made fewer mistakes; almost all my starts were good, I could feel the acceleration on the entry, had good breakouts and decent turns. I knew I had the anaerobic conditioning to be aggressive on my first 50 in my 100 free. The only real surprise was my 50 back leading off a medley relay. I’ve only swum this event twice at nationals (1993 and 2002) and rarely swim it in competition, maybe 5 or 6 times in the last 20 years. But my underwaters have been improving so I switched from fly on the relay to back and ended up going a pr and new national record (27.74). My championship prep phase of training was pretty typical with one major exception. In January, a bunch of masters swimmers were tested at Mike Mann’s Swim Labs by the head of the University of Colorado’s performance physiology program. Our first test was to swim 4 minutes very easy and then progressively increase resistance/effort. While the accuracy of the resistance in the flume was a total guess, the most revealing result for me was that when I thought I was going very easy, I was going too hard (based on blood lactate and HR). This from the guy (me) who preaches that when masters swimmers swim slowly, they swim too fast. Perceived effort can be very misleading. Anyway, he convinced me that at least one day a week I had to go very easy and preferably non-stop. For me that was keeping my HR below 120 for around 30 minutes total swim time. His proposition was that while it would not directly improve my racing conditioning, it would enhance my lactate workouts, enabling me to work harder and recover better (I won’t get into the scientific explanation he gave). Well, it seemed to work. My lactate workouts were not as devastating physically and I was able to do higher quality work at a lower cost. It may be coincidental, but I could recover from my races at nationals better than previously, and my best effort was my 10th swim at the end of the third day. However, actual sprint times in practice leading up to nationals were not better than in previous years. Being recently retired, I was able to devote more time prior to nationals to stretching, especially mid back where I’m especially tight and to opening up my chest. Re your question about predicting 20 years into the future when I was 45, I’m pretty sure I’d have been very skeptical about only going only .23 slower in the 50. During that period the things that really helped staying fast were better technique, smarter training, more consistent training, the new suits and having much younger training partners, especially for drylands. Oh, and a new supportive wife! Huge difference. My prediction for the impact of not having the long suits overall is that masters will be impacted way more than young swimmers, and the impact will be greater the older you are. This is based mostly on how much more loose skin you have as you age. Hell, I’m pretty lean but when I straighten my arms the excess skin at my elbows could supply enough material to make a wallet. Also, your skin becomes rougher. You’re like a ship’s hull covered in barnacles. Not a pretty sight. We’ll have some answers soon. Rich

Rich Here's a few questions for you when I look at the history of your top 10 times over time USMS Top Ten Swims by Richard T Abrahams It appears to me that in a few cases you have years that you tend to emphasize more than others. Particularly just before & just after aging up. I'd love to hear your comments. Did your times from Nats surprise you or did you pretty much expect to be in those ranges? Were your spring 2010 workout times indicating you were on the verge of a breakthrough for Nats? If I asked you when you were 45 yrs old if you thought there was any chance you could go 22.10 in the 50 fr 20 years later as a 65 year old? What would you have said? What do you need to do to go faster? What difference do you think a full blue seventy provides over a jammer for you? Ande Ande, To answer your questions: Like a lot of others, I train with more focus and have more developed goals in the years that I age up. Any other pattern is coincidental. However, a great venue/facility definitely increases focus and also whether or not my training partners are also going to nationals, worlds, etc. Sometimes it’s related to my health, work or family situation (sounds familiar?). From the time I was 49-52 I had serious shoulder problems that even an operation didn’t resolve. During that time I became devoted to hard core mountain biking and I feel it really helped my overall strength and aerobic/anaerobic conditioning. When I came back at age 53 (1998) I had a great year both short course and long course. Since then I’ve had shoulder operations in Feb. 2001 (right) and Sept. 2005(left) that were successful. I also had a minor knee operation in Sept. 2006. I find it very difficult to fully prepare physically and psychologically for SCY, LCM and SCM in the same year. Actually, I’ve never done it successfully but I’m going to try this year Re my times in Atlanta: they were within what I knew I could do if I didn’t make too many mistakes. When I went a 22.3 in Austin in 2008 I had a mediocre start, a horrible breakout (way too deep on my first stroke), and had a glide finish. In Atlanta I made fewer mistakes; almost all my starts were good, I could feel the acceleration on the entry, had good breakouts and decent turns. I knew I had the anaerobic conditioning to be aggressive on my first 50 in my 100 free. The only real surprise was my 50 back leading off a medley relay. I’ve only swum this event twice at nationals (1993 and 2002) and rarely swim it in competition, maybe 5 or 6 times in the last 20 years. But my underwaters have been improving so I switched from fly on the relay to back and ended up going a pr and new national record (27.74). My championship prep phase of training was pretty typical with one major exception. In January, a bunch of masters swimmers were tested at Mike Mann’s Swim Labs by the head of the University of Colorado’s performance physiology program. Our first test was to swim 4 minutes very easy and then progressively increase resistance/effort. While the accuracy of the resistance in the flume was a total guess, the most revealing result for me was that when I thought I was going very easy, I was going too hard (based on blood lactate and HR). This from the guy (me) who preaches that when masters swimmers swim slowly, they swim too fast. Perceived effort can be very misleading. Anyway, he convinced me that at least one day a week I had to go very easy and preferably non-stop. For me that was keeping my HR below 120 for around 30 minutes total swim time. His proposition was that while it would not directly improve my racing conditioning, it would enhance my lactate workouts, enabling me to work harder and recover better (I won’t get into the scientific explanation he gave). Well, it seemed to work. My lactate workouts were not as devastating physically and I was able to do higher quality work at a lower cost. It may be coincidental, but I could recover from my races at nationals better than previously, and my best effort was my 10th swim at the end of the third day. However, actual sprint times in practice leading up to nationals were not better than in previous years. Being recently retired, I was able to devote more time prior to nationals to stretching, especially mid back where I’m especially tight and to opening up my chest. Re your question about predicting 20 years into the future when I was 45, I’m pretty sure I’d have been very skeptical about only going only .23 slower in the 50. During that period the things that really helped staying fast were better technique, smarter training, more consistent training, the new suits and having much younger training partners, especially for drylands. Oh, and a new supportive wife! Huge difference. My prediction for the impact of not having the long suits overall is that masters will be impacted way more than young swimmers, and the impact will be greater the older you are. This is based mostly on how much more loose skin you have as you age. Hell, I’m pretty lean but when I straighten my arms the excess skin at my elbows could supply enough material to make a wallet. Also, your skin becomes rougher. You’re like a ship’s hull covered in barnacles. Not a pretty sight. We’ll have some answers soon. Rich