On Tuesday November 27, I had a group of athletes do a freestyle set. Here's how it went:
10x: 150 Fast Free + 150 easy choice .....the whole 300 was on (4:00)
I put this up on the white board at the beginning of practice:
The 150 Pace goals correlate pretty accurately with the 1650 paces (minus one second for the hand touch we did -- not going to the feet). The 500 times were made up by me on the spot, and basically were there for the two athletes I had in the group who don't count the 1650 as one of their top 5 events. This is a "mile pace" set, but the way I look at it is: if an athlete who swims the 100 and the 200 gets better at the mile -- in particular at the 18 and under age -- their 100 and 200 will get better as well. Certainly I'm trying to motivate everyone in my portion of the training group on this day.
For a few reasons I won't go into here, I only had one female athlete doing this set (the others were doing another set -- or training at a different time on this particular day). This athlete happens to be from Hong Kong and has only swum a few SCY meets, so I put some "grade goals" on the right side for her because she doesn't quite understand SCY times yet. The rest of my guys swim a decent mile, so I put the goals up (in red) to motivate them for our SCY Florida Championship meet this spring....the times are based off the top time, top 8, and top 16 from the mile -- from the 2011 Florida Championship meet, which was the last time we went to that meet as a team.
After a few rounds, I had to ammend a few of the goals because some of the top guys were doing pretty well -- and were "off the charts".
10x: 150 Fast Free + 150 easy choice .....the whole 300 was on (4:00)
I put this up on the white board at the beginning of practice:
The 150 Pace goals correlate pretty accurately with the 1650 paces (minus one second for the hand touch we did -- not going to the feet). The 500 times were made up by me on the spot, and basically were there for the two athletes I had in the group who don't count the 1650 as one of their top 5 events. This is a "mile pace" set, but the way I look at it is: if an athlete who swims the 100 and the 200 gets better at the mile -- in particular at the 18 and under age -- their 100 and 200 will get better as well. Certainly I'm trying to motivate everyone in my portion of the training group on this day.
For a few reasons I won't go into here, I only had one female athlete doing this set (the others were doing another set -- or training at a different time on this particular day). This athlete happens to be from Hong Kong and has only swum a few SCY meets, so I put some "grade goals" on the right side for her because she doesn't quite understand SCY times yet. The rest of my guys swim a decent mile, so I put the goals up (in red) to motivate them for our SCY Florida Championship meet this spring....the times are based off the top time, top 8, and top 16 from the mile -- from the 2011 Florida Championship meet, which was the last time we went to that meet as a team.
After a few rounds, I had to ammend a few of the goals because some of the top guys were doing pretty well -- and were "off the charts".
The final results are listed below. I thought it went well. Many of these guys have not been this fast or this consistent before on this type of set (or this exact set) -- and it's all about improvement so I'm a happy coach. Our three seniors (Aidan, Chase, BT) are 4:43-4:38-4:41 500 guys, and only BT has done the 1650 with any regularity (16:13 PR). Eric is 15 (16:23 1650), Shawn is 15 (17:30+ 1650), Liam is 15 (17:36 1650) and Jacob is 14 (18:02 1650).
Aidan (18) 123, 121, 120, 120, 121, 121, 122, 122, 121, 121
Chase (18) 127, 124, 123, 123, 123, 124, 124, 125, 123, 123
BT (18) 126, 124, 122, 124, 123, 123, 123, 125, 125, 122
Eric (15) 124, 123, 123, 123, 123, 123, 124, 123, 122, 123
Shawn (15) 130, 128, 129, 127, 129, 127, 127, 127, 127, 123
Liam (15) 131, 129, 128, 127, 129, 127, 126, 126, 126, 124
Jacob (14) 130, 129, 128, 128, 127, 126, 126, 126, 127, 125
Karen (13) 137, 135, 134, 134, 135, 135, 136, 136, 136, 136
Based off these results, I think:
1) we are in line for some improvement in the 1650. It does take time, and often doesn't happen right away, but we are going to get some drops at some point this season.
and
2) we are in line for some even higher level training now, which will lead to bigger time drops and some "big boy" times. You never know, as a coach -- but you've got to plan for the highest level success to have a shot of getting there. .....And with distance swimming, it doesn't matter how big you are, or how much "natural talent" you have -- hard work and consistentcy beats everything else!
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