I wish her the best. I feel that she can become very good again, but as I recall, her best efforts were as she was younger; she began to grow into her adult body that posed a real challenge to her old stroke (she was riding much higher in the water when younger). I wonder if advances in nutrition, weight training might help her now.
www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../25511.asp
Way cool ... glad I'm sprinting at that meet so I don't get my butt whooped by her :)
Well, that might make me want to go to ARIZ nats...Yeah, but if too many people think like that, it'll ruin my argument that the lack of tech suits is destroying Masters' meet attendance.:afraid:
Really? Name one besides Dara Torres.
Susan (Rapp) von der Lippe won Silver in the 200 *** in the 80's then qualified for the most recent Olympic Trials in the 100 *** and the 100 fly.
Yeah, but if too many people think like that, it'll ruin my argument that the lack of tech suits is destroying Masters' meet attendance.:afraid:
Maybe Tall Paul got to her.
Skip,
I loved your post ... extremely insightful and I get your points. What puzzles me about training loads, though, is why / how you see "older" people in events like the marathon succeed on a world-class level and yet, as you rightly point out, we see a greater divergence in swimming distance events as age progresses. As someone who trained high volumes in the 80s, I know it's hard mentally to keep that level up and I choose not to do that today in my Masters career. But, is the reason mental or physical? For me, I think it's mental: I just don't want to train like that ... but I'm not close to contemplating making a trials cut. My hypothesis is that, were I willing to train like I did in the 80s, I could approach my old 400 to 1500M times.
I'm curious as to how you view high yardage vs lower, targeted yardage? I can tell you I was doing higher volume, 5 days a week as a kid but now I'm doing lower volume 4 days a week in my 40's but I'm beating my HS times. It can be done. When I was in my teens, training was more like 110% effort the whole time. Now, it is 120% effort but it's less overall yardage and more rest in between. And I train with a very successful coach and age group team.
Susan (Rapp) von der Lippe won Silver in the 200 *** in the 80's then qualified for the most recent Olympic Trials in the 100 *** and the 100 fly.
OK, good start. Now name someone else. :)
Maybe Susan is who Tom was thinking of. I'm just curious who he had in mind. On the men's side the number who have even made an OT cut over the age of 40 could probably be counted on one hand.
If the comeback rumor is true then there is a good chance of her coming to the Holiday Invite at Belmont Plaza Pool - hosted by the Grunions. I was planning to go anyway - but if she decides to swim at the meet - well, all I can say is "lookout masters record book".
I'm curious as to how you view high yardage vs lower, targeted yardage? I agree that more quality and lower yardage can be better and produce good to great results in shorter events. I think it can be applied to the 500-1650/400-1500 to some extent, but that some measure of pounding out some serious pace work is required for those distances. Given time constraints now (early 40s), a GREAT week of training is around 20,000 yards. When I did my best 1500 time back in my youth, 20K could be a single day of training ... not every day, but weeks were more in the 70,000 to 90,000 meter range during the intense parts of training. I don't think I'd need to go that high now, but I think I'd need to be training 50K a week consistently to contemplate times that approached my best HS & college 1000 and 1650 times.
OK, good start. Now name someone else. :)
Maybe Susan is who Tom was thinking of. I'm just curious who he had in mind. On the men's side the number who have even made an OT cut over the age of 40 could probably be counted on one hand.
I thought Wally Dicks held the record for oldest OT qualifier (100 ***) at 40 until SVDL beat him out by a few months at the last trials.
