Anna s wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
I was "Pacing" the fly legs, and after 10m on the free leg, I was able to get back up to speed, but maybe this strategy is bad. Maybe better to go hard on the fly leg and recover a bit more on the free since there is more drag if you go "too easy" on the fly leg.
Dev
I think one of the most important things in fly is keeping the rythm going. I started at an easy pace, which was harder at the end due to my lack of fly fitness strength/cardio. Also its easier to play around with free speeds than fly, I was going slower than Ironman pace for free. To be honest I was more concerned about actually making the 400m 50/50, I would love to be able to swim this at a good pace knowing I could get to the pain barrier without the lactate building up too much on the fly. I don't know how you did 1000m.
Edited to say: I think you should train shorter intervals. When I raced 200m fly I hardly ever did this distance in training - it's just too stressful.
I agree that is is dead easy to modulate pace in free. In fly you just have hard and insanely hard. I am not sure what possessed me, but I decided to do some more yesterday. First was untimed 400 50/50. I just focused on pushing off the walls faster. I did 100m kick in between and then time I did a second one tried to see what it would be like doing 100-100-100-100. I am not sure what was harder, but I THINK I was able to take the free legs harder after initial recovery strokes and went 7:07. I don't think the fly totals where much slower. Then I did a single 100 as 50/50 and that was 1:35. Then I did a single 200 and that was 3:30. I basically had nothing left during the 200 since it was at the end of 70 min in the pool second day in a row. I think I will add hard 100's and hard 50's of both strokes. All of last year, I did not want to chase the clock because then I get into a self racing mode. I really wanted to focus on recovering from my disc/nerve items and did not trust myself to hold back when the clock is on if I feel a tweak. Thus when I turned the clock back on, I felt it safer at the longer distances where forces are lower
I spent all of last year learning all the strokes when I could not run and walk since I always just swam free as an adult swimmer and saving my energy for bike and run workouts and never really pushing the swim. Honestly that was kind of stupid, because as an XC skier, I would go full throttle just like any elite skier and then with whatever I have left over I would do tri training....2 years ago, off just XC ski training and 70 min trainer riders, and two 2 hour trainer ride I did IM South Africa (I think I was 11th in my age group...all off good cardio). That winter I just skied super hard (and weekly 5 hours speedskate+XC ski+run workout) and ran a lot. I should know better that it does not really matter which sport you do, the cardio from swim or XC ski will help the bike and run that I am already proficient at....the cardio from run and bike won't help my swim that I relatively suck at.
In any case, now I am addicted to swimming. If I don't make it to the pool, it's like someone took away a meal from me or did not give me oxygen. I always had this plan to get totally into swimming at 60 (target retirement date, although that may be dramatically accelerated if markets are good)....so instead, I accelerated the swim plan at age 50 last year and got totally into it.