- For the rest of the summer season, I'm pretty much just going to stay in maintenance mode, aiming for 4-5 practices a week. No high intensity or high yardage training, just continuing to work on my back technique and maintaining my current proficiency in the other strokes. The next meet isn't till late October, so I won't start training for it until we head indoors in September.
- Starting next week, I'm going to do one or two lessons a week with Katie, one of the coaches on the team. For the remainder of the summer season, provided her schedule cooperates (she coaches an age group team, too), I'll do half an hour sessions with her before the Tuesday and Thursday evening practices. The intent is to really work on my technique, since there's a rather limited amount of time that the coaches can spend with an individual swimmer during the practices. I haven't decided what specific things we'll work on, just that we'll work on technique in general. Provided her schedule allows it, I'd like to continue the lessons through the fall/spring season, although not necessarily twice a week at that point. We'll be practicing at pools with blocks, flags (not all of our summer pools have 'em), and all that stuff, so the lessons could even expand to race specific stuff. In addition, I've started sending some of my swim videos to a friend of mine, Will B. A few years older than me, we swam together for a few years in Louisville, and his younger brother is one of my best friends. Anyways, he was a backstroker and is now the head coach at Darton. He's been a lot of help the past couple weeks and has given me some great advice and tips for backstroke. I'll continue to shoot him videos and questions as my training progresses. With his technical expertise (albeit just communicated via email, rather than in person) and Katie's lessons, I think I'll make vast strides in my technique and strokes over the coming year.
- Starting in September when we move inside, I'm going to start training for the 200 fly and 200 back. I fully intend to swim both of those at Spring Nationals in Indy next May, so I'm going to train for them for the whole season. The endurance I'll build training for those two will also help for the 100 fly and 100 back, but I'll also need to throw speed training in for the latter two. I'm thinking that if my technique is sufficiently improved by that point, then I could use my half hour lessons with Katie to work on speed/endurance training to supplement the team practices and my solo practices. That's a long way from now, though, so I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. My goal for Zones and Nats next spring is to be able to swim my choices of the 50/100/200 fly and back and the 200/400 IM and post good times in whichever events I choose. To this point, I'm only satisfied with my 50 and 100 fly times, so that's a lot of training I've gotta do between now and April.
- The practice schedule hasn't been posted for the indoor season yet, but I assume it'll be similar to last year, with morning practices offered from 5:00-7:00am MWF (one hour long practices, just two sessions), 6:00-7:00am TTh, Saturday 8:00-9:00am, and evening practices offered 7:30-8:30pm MTTh. Unfortunately, this past season, there was no rhyme or reason as to the practice plans--they used to follow a schedule such as "Tuesday evenings are sprint practices, Wednesday mornings are IM," or something along those lines. The season started out that way, but then it ended up that each practice didn't seem to be coordinated with any of the others, so you might have three practices in a row that were distance free, or two IM practices back to back, that sort of thing. Therefore, I'm looking at the team practices as just a way to get some yardage in, not as my main way of getting in specific training. I'll swim solo to get in my specific training. With that in mind, I'm thinking something like MWF (or maybe TWTh) mornings, MTTh evenings, and Saturday mornings with the team for general yardage. On top of that, I'm planning an hour long solo practice on MTh evenings before the team practice and a 90 minute solo practice Wednesday evenings. I might also do a solo kick practice once a week, but I haven't made up my mind about that yet. During the three solo practices, I'll focus on alternating between high intensity, high speed, and stroke workouts. The USMS forum has a set of coaches that post practices online for the various disciplines, so I'll use their practices for my solo practices. High intensity practices. High yardage practices. Stroke practices. There are some awesome looking practices in there! I did a handful of them (mostly the sprint practices) in the months leading up to Nats in April, but didn't do them regularly. This time around I intend to utilize them to supplement the team practices, to fill out the gaps in that training.
- Weights and dryland! I've been sadly remiss with these two, so I'm starting to incorporate the two of them next week, starting with a month or so of dryland before I tack on weights.
Since I'm seriously stepping up my game this time around, I've decided to update my goal times for the remainder of this year and next year that I set in April before Nats. Where I've changed my goal times, the original goal times are in parentheses. The times for next year, unfortunately, are not my goal times for Nats in Indy. They're just my goal times for the calendar year.
Event
|
2012
|
2013
|
50 fly
|
25.5 (25.8)
|
24.5
|
100 fly
|
57.1 (57.1)
|
55.0
|
200 fly
|
2:16.0 (2:18.0)
|
2:07.0 (2:05.0, a
typo)
|
50 back
|
27.5 (28.0)
|
26.5
|
100 back
|
1:01.0 (1:02.0)
|
57.0
|
200 back
|
2:15.0 (2:18.0)
|
2:08.0 (2:10.0)
|
100 IM
|
1:00.0 (1:01.0)
|
58.0
|
200 IM
|
2:15.0 (2:15.0)
|
2:08.0
|
400 IM
|
5:00.0 (5:00.0)
|
4:45.0 (4:40.0, a
typo)
|
50 free
|
24.5 (25.0)
|
23.9
|
100 free
|
55.0 (55.5)
|
53.8
|
200 free
|
2:02.0 (2:05.0)
|
1:58.0
|
With a full 3+ months of hard training under my belt this fall, I'm pretty confident with my 2012 time projections. At least, I'm pretty confident with my fly and back projections. The 200 IM looks to be achievable by then, too, but I'm not sure about the 100 or 400 (don't even know if I'll swim the latter till next year, so it's iffy). If I swim the free events, they should also be feasible, but like the 400 IM, I might not swim them till next year, since I'm training specifically for fly and back, and those events take precedence over free/IM events at all meets.
I'm seriously pumped for the upcoming season! I've always like swimming indoors more than outdoors, and the thought of swimming in a facility that actually has all the accoutrements of a regular pool (good lane ropes, blocks, flags, sufficient lighting, good walls) is so much more enticing to me than most of the outdoor pools we swim at. In addition, with the help of Will and Katie, I'm starting to have more hope in my swimming improving. And plus, the Olympics are a hell of a motivator!
Can't wait for the start of the season!
EDIT: I've got a competition partner (not really sure what to call her) for backstroke! One of my friends, Jayme V., swims for one of the other teams in the area, and swims at most of the local meets as well. She's a backstroker, and we're approximately in the same time bracket (although she's faster right now), so she's who I'm gunning for in back at every meet we're both at! If she's swimming at the sprint meet in October, the first meet of the season, my goal is to beat her in whichever backstroke events she's swimming. :-D
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