you can blag your way through 25yd or 25m pool to a limited extent but a 50m pool exposes every single stroke of ineffectiveness you possess - in my case its proving to be far more than I anticipated
I find that I can get through a 50 or 100 fast repeats (for me - not compared to others on here) but the pace drops off significantly beyond 2-400. I can swim “all day” but its just slow.
I think some of its due to technique, but I think more importantly I just lack any type of muscular endurance from not having swum for a decade. Quite depressing
I think some of its due to technique, but I think more importantly I just lack any type of muscular endurance from not having swum for a decade. Quite depressing
I am 10 years out from college swimming and completely understand your plight… I swam at a masters meet a few weeks ago and came within 3 seconds of my all time best 100 free but almost a minute (!?!) slower than my all time best in the 500. Unless you’re swimming 5+ times a week it’s tough to keep up pace past a few hundred, especially in LCM or open water.
It gets better. I’m over 20 years out from college swimming, been back at it for just over a year now. I’m guessing that I’m about 5 seconds out from my best 100, but I’m about 35 seconds out from my best 400.
I feel the same way! The pool where my team practices will occasionally switch from 25y to 50m, and that makes it so much harder! To me it feels like the perceived effort is way higher for a similar pace. I also find myself lengthening my stroke to save energy, which makes me a little slower. I can do 100s on 1:15 scy without too much trouble, but on Monday we did some 100s on 1:25 in the lcm pool and that was quite a struggle.
I feel the same way! The pool where my team practices will occasionally switch from 25y to 50m, and that makes it so much harder! To me it feels like the perceived effort is way higher for a similar pace. I also find myself lengthening my stroke to save energy, which makes me a little slower. I can do 100s on 1:15 scy without too much trouble, but on Monday we did some 100s on 1:25 in the lcm pool and that was quite a struggle.
I do 100’s sets in yards on 1:12 (It is quite easy: you go on the :12 /:24 / :36 / :48 / :TOP repeat ) and I think that is easier than doing LCM on 1:25. As someone mentioned the cumulative “rest” you get on each wall adds up.
Something I have noticed: Rest has a bigger positive impact on my LCM times than SCY/SCM times. It works that way in two manners: first when I do a set of 100’s in LCM on 1:25 I might go a 1:16 on the first one, feel pretty good but by the end my pace has crept up to 1:20 and I’ll start thinking I should have done them on 1:30. That basically never happens in Short Course. The other thing is I’ll drop 4 seconds per 100 with a taper in LC while its maybe 2 per 100 in SC.
LCM is hard, I hate it. For those two reasons, I am sure it makes me a better swimmer. Always seems like pushing you out of your comfort zone is good (and it sucks).
I like it largely because I find it a relentlessly honest assessment of my inability to swim quickly end to end.
I think it truly separates the men from the boys, the only parallel I can immediately think of is to take a single figure club golfer and put them off the tips on a course set up for a major - just like swimming LCM, it exposes every part of your game - running is a bit different, you can be completely revisionist about coming up short but LCM are brutal and I’m proving to be crap at it…
I like it largely because I find it a relentlessly honest assessment of my inability to swim quickly end to end.
I think it truly separates the men from the boys, the only parallel I can immediately think of is to take a single figure club golfer and put them off the tips on a course set up for a major - just like swimming LCM, it exposes every part of your game - running is a bit different, you can be completely revisionist about coming up short but LCM are brutal and I’m proving to be crap at it…
My experience has been that it takes 3-4 weeks to adapt to long course swimming, and after that you’re pretty used to it. You’re certainly right about LCM being a truer test of swimming ability though, which is why oly swimming is always contested in 50 m pools. FINA did not even start recognizing scm records until March 1991. OTOH, there is now lots of money to be made swimming on the scm World Cup circuit:)
Well, they did track scm records, just didn’t call them records. They were World Bests, or something like that.
Distinction without a difference, really.
Ah, i see and i remember hearing the term “world bests” but did not realize they were tracking the scm records/bests all along. Since we were back in the prehistoric era b/f the internet, i never saw the scm records in the good old Guinness Book of WRs:)
I’m not certain of this, because I’ve never really been involved with the meet management side of things, but my guess is that the scm records weren’t “world records” because they weren’t required to follow all of the regulations surrounding a world record swim. There are quite a few of them…
I’m not certain of this, because I’ve never really been involved with the meet management side of things, but my guess is that the scm records weren’t “world records” because they weren’t required to follow all of the regulations surrounding a world record swim. There are quite a few of them…
Ah, good point, i have read about some of that, espec the need to have the pool length surveyed if any bulkheads are involved, and also various other details.
100 Fly - Tom Ponting
50-100-200 Back - Mark Tewksbury (later set first official scm wr in 100)
4x100 Mens Medley Relay (set twice with a slighty different team each time)
we had fun with this… never live this stuff down… she had life size cutouts at cineplex. I got my hands on one when they were about to toss it… her reaction at practice was absolutly priceless…
she is married to another former team mate, Delano Ducheck. if their boys swim they will be very fast, both Delano and his brother were very good swimmers. I consider her hubby to be a talent that never met his full potential. We were both on a NAG record relay in 4x100 Medey.
we had fun with this… never live this stuff down… she had life size cutouts at cineplex. I got my hands on one when they were about to toss it… her reaction at practice was absolutly priceless…
she is married to another former team mate, Delano Ducheck. if their boys swim they will be very fast, both Delano and his brother were very good swimmers. I consider her hubby to be a talent that never met his full potential. We were both on a NAG record relay in 4x100 Medey.
Who is it?? I can’t see an image, firewall is probably blocking it.
Wouldn’t that be a pretty linear drop off though. You’re 5s/100 best, 35s/400 best =3.5s/100. Sounds like it’s about the same difference across distances.
One meet, which was sub-par (I was sick)…