daved wrote:
Some great advice from Jason.
Id take a day off before as well.
I am just going to reinforce a couple points. Get your legs warmed up. Youll use them more than you think racing in a pool. So best to get them going as those big muscles will eat up reserves quickly if they are not ready to go.
And since i now put myself in this category i can say it.. i recommend to older swimmers (esp triathletes who compete) to, if possible, in the warm up pool do a building set of 50s, like 4-6 of them where that last 50 is VERY HARD. Not like spend your last energy hard, but def harder than say 500 pace. More like a fast 200 pace. and finish that within 2 min of your event. (so about 2 heats before yours, finish your last one)
Then pop out.
Youll be breathing hard and soaking wet. But as we age, we need to have the engine going. Too much downtime and its hard to go again. I personally have had massive success with this method, as well as many of my swimmers.
Its like pulling teeth to get them to do it.. but they almost universally have a better race with that warm up.
Basically I noticed over a few years of masters meet swimming that once i hit the warm down pool AFTER one of my races.. I kept wishing I could go do the event again.
And yes, DEF warmdown after a race. Dont chit chat. Get in and move!
Anyways, food for thought.
good luck!
Thanks for the advice on when to finish the warmup. This was the hardest part I found about fast mass swim starts in triathlon too. IF you have a warmup, you end up spending forever doing not much and standing around crammed into a small pen where you can't move your arms and legs. So Definitely agree that ending the warmup 2-3 min before my heat would be a great idea. I thnk on day 1 my first event is 100 fly and right after that is 400 IM. I have no idea the time in between, but I don't think it will be that much since I will be in one of the slower groups in the 100 fly so likely at the end and the 400IM there just won't be a ton of heats overall, but then again, it is probably 10 min between heats of 400 IM so that could drag out for a while. I am spending my week basically cruising overall and sprinting into each turn and working that phase and then come out hard and cruise. I think this will work some intensity, lots of rest and make me practice legal turns since when I swim on my own, I can do all kinds of cheater turns depending on the stroke (ex, sometimes when I swim back stroke, when I push off the wall, I just dolphin kick on my stomach because I prefer no water up my nose and I can go longer on my stomach since i don't need to exhale immediately through nose).
