Training plan for the 2014-2015 season

After a more or less disappointing Nationals meet last weekend (disappointing solely due to myself), I'm re-energized and ready to hit the pool hard for the fall and spring. As mentioned...uh, several times...in the previous post, I do not like long course. More to the point, though, I don't like swimming outdoors at the pools we train at during the summer. Half of them don't have flags or clocks, and some have cruddy lighting, so swimming in the evening is an exercise in futility. I'm an indoor swimmer through and through. Give me flags, a clock, and no worry of storms or losing my place in the lane, and I'm happy.

With all that in mind, I'm pretty pumped for Nationals in the spring. It's going to be in May at a brand new facility, presumably state of the art facility in San Antonio. The competition pool is an outdoor 50m pool, with the pool split into two 10 lane 25y courses (there's another, older, 50m pool and a 25y diving well inside). While it's outdoors, the lighting and signage should be just fine. I'll have to get used to swimming with mirrored goggles prior to then, though. On top of all that, there's an outside chance we can convince Alaina to go, so I'm going to try my best to get in tip top shape and drag her with me! :-D

I want to focus on two events this training cycle, the 200 fly and 200 back. As I've seen over the last two years, I can't seem to be able to find that top gear in my sprint backstroke, and to a slightly lesser degree the same for butterfly, so I'll focus on the events that don't rely on that top gear.

Training for those two 200s will also take care of their respective 100s, so I'm just going to focus on the longer distances. Successfully training to improve in those events will require significantly different training than I've done over the past 3 years. In the past, I've trained just doing Masters practices, and while they work well for general conditioning, they are really pretty terrible for competition training. Our practices are generally written for the lowest common denominator, so there isn't much competition focused training. This time around, I'm going to try and get in a good amount of competition focused training. Here's how I am currently planning to have my training schedule break down each week:

• Monday: Swim 1 hour short course on my own, focusing on technique and underwaters
• Tuesday: Swim 1.5 hours long course with age group team's senior prep group
• Wednesday: Swim 1 hour short course on my own, focusing on stroke yardage
• Thursday: Swim 1.5 hours long course with age group team's senior prep group
• Friday: Swim 2 hours short course with age group team's senior prep group
• Saturday: Swim 1 hour with Masters team
• Sunday: Rest day

Tuesday and Thursday will really serve to bring my aerobic base and endurance up--long course training kicks my behind, but will really help the back end of my 200s come San Antonio. I'll focus on stroke specific training on Monday and Wednesday on my own, focusing primarily on getting in a lot of quality stroke yardage (fly and back) and working my underwaters. Fridays will serve to get me used to high yardage workouts, which will also help the back end of my race. Saturdays will serve as a more or less recovery swim for the week.

I have three key focuses with this training plan:

1. Get my yardage base up high enough that I develop a good back end on my races. Looking at my best races from the past couple of years and comparing them to my best races back in the day, while I can take them out nearly as fast, my back end isn't even remotely close to what it used to be. Building up a high aerobic yardage base with the kids will directly impact my ability to bring races back.
2. Underwaters, underwaters, underwaters. I'm comparatively much stronger underwater than I am on the surface in backstroke, and also stronger (albeit to a lesser degree) in butterfly. Especially since I'm focusing on the 200s, that's a lot of underwater time that I can capitalize on if I can improve my underwaters. Every time I swim on my own, I'm going to work on breath control and my underwater dolphin kick. Hopefully by the end of the season I'll see a marked improvement over my current underwaters.
3. Racing technique. I know there's something jacked up with my fast fly and back, but I don't have the same problems when I swim at a slower pace. Hopefully I can work with the age group coach to identify what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it.

If I can nail those three things over the course of the season, I should be able to have some monster swims in San Antonio. I had a monster swim in the 200 back in Indy in 2013, and that was without those three--with them, who knows? I could theoretically put lifetime bests in the 200 fly and back in my sights. I'm a lot stronger now than I was as a teenager, swim a lot smarter than I did then, and *should* have better technique, so I think it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together. I haven't been able to do that yet, but hopefully this season will get me closer!

Also, one final point--I'm planning to compete in as many Masters and age group meets as I can. All the training in the world means nothing if you can't put it into play when it counts, so I intend to race as much as possible in order to get used to putting it all on the line.

If all this training plays off, here are my goal times for San Antonio:

200 backstroke	2:08.50
100 backstroke	58.50
200 butterfly	2:12.50
100 butterfly	58.50

I don't know what the other two events I'll swim at San Antonio will be, but I fully intend to swim these four and try to hit these times.

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Outside the pool, I'm going to focus on three things, too.

1. Getting stronger. From this past weekend, I can tell my lats and hamstrings aren't very strong. I'm going to add in a dryland program a couple times a week that will include squats/lunges/pushups/ab work/pullups, as well as some medicine ball and resistance cord work. If I can, I'll also join the Golds a block from my office and add in some weight lifting. Even without all that, I'm stronger than I was as a teenager, so hopefully I'll get substantially stronger with that training.
2. Flexibility. I'm woefully unflexible right now. When I got my massage at the meet, the massage therapist had to actively push my legs into positions that I used to be able to just swing them into with no assistance. I'm really tight and can't really extend or contract my hips and lower back like I used to. I'll have to add in a stretching routine at least a couple times a week, too.
3. Massages. I felt fantastic after the massage at the meet, so I think I'm going to look into getting a sports massage once a month going forward. With the amount of training I plan to do, I can't see this being anything but a good thing.

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Yep, I know I've set some pretty darn lofty goals, but I'm hoping I'll have enough motivation from friends and Alaina to push me to hold my goals!

2014 USMS Summer Nationals recap!

Man, I am not a fan of swimming or racing long course!

I never particularly cared for it back in the day, and don't like it now. At least back then I was in good enough shape and had the endurance to swim events without a gazillion walls. I don't have that endurance right now (to be fair, that is totally on me, since I didn't train much this summer), but only swimming one long course practice a week sure doesn't help get you ready to race long course, either.

Nationals was at the University of Maryland at College Park. I haven't swum at this pool before--I've swum multiple meets at UMD Baltimore County, but not at the College Park campus. It's a fantastic facility! Lots of space, good ventilation, deep pool from end to end (many are shallow at one end and deep at the other--while this one was deeper at one end, it was still 8'-9' deep at the "shallow" end), excellent gutters, and just felt fast. The blocks were cruddy, though, but that's the only downside in my experience.

Anyhoo, here's how my Nationals went.

Friday

50 back

Ugh. This was not a good swim. I had a good start and almost fantastic underwaters (went a shade too deep and took one dolphin kick more than I had planned for). Once I came up to the surface, I tried to spin my arms at the rate necessary for a dead sprint...and failed miserably. It felt like I could only get them moving at about my 100 turnover pace, which doesn't work at all for a 50. On top of that, my lats started to tighten and cramp up towards the end, which slowed my stroke rate down even further. Sigh. I went a 34.76, which unfortunately was slower than my 34.40 entry time from my only other masters long course meet two years ago. A quite disappointing start to my meet.

Men's 200 free relay

I was the third person on our relay and had a rather slow start. I thought our second guy was going to glide and do the extended stroke into the finish, but he took a short, faster stroke instead, so my timing was off. Not the slowest relay start I've ever done, but still left probably close to half a second on the block. Felt really good for the first 30 meters or so, then had to take a breath. For sprint free, the problem I've had over the last year is that I have a really good rhythm while swimming without breathing, but taking a breath destroys that rhythm and I noticeably slow down while doing so. Ended up taking a total of three breaths in the 50 due to catching more water than air on the second breath, and slowed down correspondingly. I went a 28.87, which is right on my estimated split entry time (I'd estimated a 28.80), but isn't very good in the grand scheme of things. Like in the 50 back, my lats started to lock up in the last 5-10 meters of the race.

I've really gotta figure out how to keep my technique in sprint free. In the 100 and 200, in the few times I've swum them as a masters swimmer, I have no problems keeping my technique when I breathe. But in the 50, with the much higher turnover rate and much lower breathing rate, it totally jacks my stroke up when I take a breath. I'm going to experiment with galloping over the upcoming fall/spring season and see if I can figure out how to sprint at top speed using that technique. I've played around with galloping off and on for the past two years, but haven't put any serious effort into it. I've also never galloped at 100% effort before, so while I can breath just fine at 90% effort while galloping, I haven't experimented with that last 10%. Something to think about over the next 9 months.

Saturday

200 back

I felt better during warmup than I had the day before, and it more or less carried through to this event. I asked Chris (our on deck coach for the day) how I should pace the 200, go all out and try to hang on, or take it out long and strong and build the back half. He said to follow the latter strategy, so that's what I did. I felt long and relaxed for the first 150, but going into the last turn, I felt like I had too much energy left. I upped the pace on the last 50, and felt really good till my lats yet again locked up in the last 15 meters. Not looking at the speed, just *how* I split the race, I swam it quite well: 40.07, 43.55, 44.84, 42.52, for a 2:50.98. My time from 2 years ago was a 2:57.67, so I'll definitely take the almost 6 second time drop! That said, I had been hoping to go closer to a 2:45. I suppose I might have been able to lop a second or two off the first three 50s, but I don't know if that would have caused the lat cramping to start even earlier than it did.

Mixed 200 medley relay

I swam the 50 back leg on our relay. I was tired after the 200 back and just didn't have much gas in the tank, not to mention the whole lat cramping issue, which cropped up again on this race. Went a 35.49. It was just an icky swim.

Sunday

Men's 200 medley relay

I swam the fly leg on this relay. It felt really, really good! I kept it long and relaxed at about 85% effort. I knew there was enough of a gap between us and the relay ahead of us that there'd be no point in me sprinting it, so decided to just relax and enjoy myself. It was the best my fly has felt all year. Again, I had a slowish relay start (same guy that I went off of on the free relay also swam breast on this relay, and did another short stroke into the finish, messing up my timing), but I had a good entry, underwater, and then good swim. I went a 32.55, which is right around what I had hoped for. Even better, my lats felt fine!

100 back

Eh, this wasn't a terrible swim, but the last 15 meters were painful. While I didn't have any problems with my lats on the relay, they started to tighten up at the turn and had completely locked up by the 85m mark. Looking at how I split it, it wasn't a terribly paced swim at 37.03 and 39.59, for 1:16.62. On a plus note, I dropped exactly 2 seconds from  my time from two years ago. I was definitely starting to run out of steam at this point in the meet--I'd estimate it felt like I was running at about 80% energy.

50 fly

This was my last swim of the meet and felt like my worst one. Like with sprint freestyle, I have problems conveying my good technique from 90% effort to 100% effort. My stroke felt choppy and a little bit off, and the ever present lat cramping monster reared its head at about the 40m mark. I could barely push my arms forward at the end, my lats were so tight. Blegh. I went a 32.02, just marginally faster than on the relay. It was faster than the 32.50 I went two years ago, though, so I suppose that's a good thing.

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After I finished swimming on Sunday, I got a massage--they have on deck massage therapists at the national championship meets, and man, are they worth the money! I got a 30 minute massage and had the lady focus on my upper back, lats, and hamstrings. She said my upper back was insanely knotted up, and likewise with my lats. While my hamstrings weren't quite as bad, she did say that my hip flexors are really stiff. She recommended, due to my proposed level of training in the fall and spring, that I get a sports massage at least once a month, as well as starting a comprehensive stretching routine. I got a referral to a sports massage place in Alexandria, so I'll check them out in the next few weeks.

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All in all, it was an ok meet. I didn't swim very well compared to my in shape times, but for the most part I swam better than I expected, coming off my off and on knee injury and lack of conditioning. I'll take it!