As a Masters swimmer, it is my own personal 200th circle of hell. At times, I've been this guy. I've blacked out during the race and managed to get DQd not once, but twice. I've had a 31 second gap between my front half and back half of the race. I've choked on water when deep into oxygen deprivation and gone into survival mode.
I've had all those terrible things happen to me in that race, yet I keep coming back for more. That last 50 is usually sheer hell on earth, but the entire race itself is something I just love. That might say something about me, but I don't know if it's good or bad.
I've picked three things as being vital to a good 200 fly for me, based on the last three years of evidence:
- Conditioning. My closest 200 split to date was a 12 second gap between the first and second halves. Over the past few years, I've been training enough to have the speed necessary to take the 200 out well...but haven't had near the conditioning to bring it back well.
- Underwaters. The 200 fly is a cold blooded killer when it comes to my back and shoulder muscles. That last 50 usually is so painful because those muscles are knotted up, on fire, and screaming for relief. The more time I can spend underwater, the less stress I have on those muscle groups, and theoretically the less abysmal that last 50 is going to be.
- Mental fortitude. The 200 fly is a daunting race, no matter how good at it or in shape you are. Some of my races, I've fallen victim to my own mind games and not attacked it as I should. I need to attack the race and stick with it, no matter how much pain I'm in, rather than taking the easy way out and half assing the race. If you're gonna swim the 200 fly, you need to full ass it!
With that in mind, I compared my most recent 200 fly from a few weeks ago with my Masters best 200 fly, from Nationals in San Antonio last spring.
Timewise, I was a 2:28 last year, out in a 1:08 and back in a 1:20. A few weeks ago, I was out in a 1:11 and back in something like a 1:23. There was a timing snafu, so I'm not actually sure what my real splits were. At Nationals I was rested, shaved, tapered, and had a brand new meet suit. At this recent meet, I was none of those, and had a bunch of cramping problems. That said, my splits, while slower, were right in line with my Nationals splits! I'm also swimming much more than I was last year, so I'm hoping to bring that back half split down quite a bit over the remaining two months till this spring's Nationals.
I watched the videos of both races and did some analysis on stroke and underwater dolphin kick count per lap. The first set of numbers is the number of underwater kicks and strokes per lap last year, second set is the kick/stroke count for the meet a few weeks ago.
- 6/6 - 6/6
- 3/9 - 5/8
- 3/9 - 5/7
- 3/9 - 5/8
- 3/9 - 4/8
- 2/9 - 4/9
- 3/9 - 4/8
- 3/8 - 3/8
All in all, I did 10 more dolphin kicks and took 6 fewer strokes a few weeks ago than I did last spring. My goal by Nationals is to be able to take at least 5 dolphin kicks on each lap and no more than 8 strokes each lap. I'd love to get it to 5 kicks and 7 strokes per lap, but I don't know if that will be feasible within 2 months, but definitely think it will be achievable for next year.
I'm racing the 200 fly at two more meets before Nationals--one this weekend and one on March 20th. By the March 20th meet, I should be down below 200 pounds (I'm at ~206 right now and was at about the same weight last spring at Nationals). By Nationals, I should be around 190ish, and will have the full shave, taper, rest, and new suit. Combining that with 2 months of heavy butterfly training, and I hope to have a quite successful 200 fly at Nationals!
Goal time is sub-2:19.30. Hope I can make it happen!
