The countown to Nationals is almost over! We drive down next Thursday afternoon/evening, and then kick off the meet Friday morning!
Here's how I stand as of now, with about a week of taper under my belt:
Fly: Feeling good! We did two 50s race pace from a dive on Tuesday at the end of practice and both were quick. Accounting for the inaccuracy of the coach timing me, I was probably around a mid 27 on both, which is a second off my meet time. That is right where I want to be. My normal fudge factor is that practice times are about 5-10% slower than in a meet, so if that is actually the case, then I should be able to break that 26 second barrier in the 50 fly at Nats.
Back: I *might* have figured out the biggest missing piece in the why-is-my-backstroke-so-sucky puzzle by accident on Wednesday! Back in my junior year of highschool, I'd plateaued for quite a while in backstroke--I think I spent about a year and some change within a second or two range on the 100 and 200. Mike and Scott tried anything and everything under the sun to improve my stroke and get me off the plateau, but nothing was working. Finally, in what I'm now pretty sure was a why the hell not move, Scott had me tuck my chin in more towards my chest more when I swim, taking my head out of the neutral position. For some reason, it worked, and I started dropping time again and continued throughout my senior year. Anyways, until Wednesday night, I'd completely forgotten about that technique. I kicked something in the lane while doing some backstroke drill, so I lifted my head up a bit to see what I'd kicked and as I did so, I remembered the technique. Played around with it a bit and ended up doing two 50s sprint from a push, one with my normal head position, one with my head curled in a bit. The second, with the head position change, was at least a second faster than the first one. That, along with the corrected pull technique I've been working on, could very well be the ticket to me starting to approach my old speed! It's too early to tell one way or the other, soI'll have to work on it quite a bit more to make sure, but so far it's quite promising!
Kick: I've been doing a LOT of butterfly vertical kicking lately, and it's showing. I've been doing sessions ranging from 10 minutes straight to half an hour straight, and my fly kick is feeling great. It's been my strongest point since I started swimming again, but it's feeling stronger than ever--I'm usually able to get more speed off the walls on a turn in practice than anyone I'm swimming against in the next lane. On a side note, doing that much vertical kicking is a HECK of a good ab workout! I've still got more weight to lose till my abs are fully revealed, but I can feel them and the top muscles are starting to be revealed. I've been working this week on adding at least one more fly kick coming off each wall--when I swim a free set, I've been trying to do at least four fly kicks off the turns, instead of my normal three, and so on.
My overall energy level is way up, my appetite is generally through the roof, and I'm raring to go! Hopefully I'll keep that energy and enthusiasm up through next weekend!
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