Do you have other workouts where you're doing, say 30x100 @ 2:40? That is, working on endurance but not so much speed?
I found in rowing that it made sense to treat the two as completely separate problems, and that after long enough working on slow endurance some days and short speed workouts on others, it got much easier to do long workouts fast. Simply starting with a short, fast workout, and trying to keep going longer, on the other hand, was just awful.
My colleague plays underwater hockey- he's somehow affiliated with the "national team," and he talks about a lot of weird workouts they do. Stuff like swimming 75m underwater, resting for 30s, repeating. Just bizarre.
Still, I'm hoping that this post, like the post about the Ex kicking my ass, will be an occasion for future chortles at my own past incompetence.
I don't understand. Did you later beat Ex, and now can look fondly back on your childish inability at that time? Do you expect to be able to do 30 X 100 @ 1:40 at some point?
Still, I'm hoping that this post, like the post about the Ex kicking my ass, will be an occasion for future chortles at my own past incompetence. Keep hope alive.
Awhile back one of the new people here, Saheli I think, apologized for seeming to have criticized you. It was impossible at the point to explain to her that Ogged existsto be abused, and that apologies to Ogged are thus really quite inappropriate.
Did you later beat Ex, and now can look fondly back on your childish inability at that time?
Precisely, Timbot, precisely. Ex won't race me anymore, and it wouldn't be very nice of me to race her.
Do you expect to be able to do 30 X 100 @ 1:40 at some point?
Not really. Even in the prime of life, I didn't have big lungs. No endurance, which I'm sure you can understand. But I do expect that 5 x 100 @ 1:40 will seem not very hard some time in the future.
TJ, some things are so painful that I always sort of hope that you don't actually have to train for them, that some people can just do them, other people can't, and I don't have to think about all the pain involved in learning to do it. Swimming long distances under water is one of those things. I see the current world record is 175m without using fins. (Dynamic apnea is the one to look for: all the ones with negative distances involve people swimming, or being carried, straight down.) Ouch.
Of course, something I didn't realise until I learned to dive with SCUBA is that not everyone floats, and the people who don't tend to be able to swim underwater better because they aren't fighting to stay down there.
Kieran Perkins is a freak. More so than Olympic quality athletes in general. If you want something really scary, observe that the world record for the 200 freestyle is only 1:44.06. Granted, they aren't going to be doing five of these in a row...
And LB, I'm not sure if this is counterintuitive or not, but training for endurance usually involves faster intervals and less rest, while if you want to train for speed you swim faster on a slower interval. It still sucks, but in a completely different way.
Jake, if I recall correctly Kieran Perkins once set the 400m world record in the first eight laps of a 1500m race in which he also set the 1500m record. (Interesting fact about Australia for the day: because of Perkins and later Grant Hackett, who have between them been all over the men's 1500m for the last decade, Australia is completely obsessed with that Olympics event. It's always has the most TV viewers for an Olympic event, and is usually one of the top three or four most watched TV segments of that year.)
ogged, I didn't actually know what the stroke looked like. I tend to be more interested in the no-limits apnea, primarily because it's just completely nuts.
When I was in junior high and early high school (mid-80s), and just starting to get ery competitive about swimming, I had an old-school coach who was still heavily invested in the 1970s-syle of massive overtraining (12000 meter workouts were not unheard of in the summer, and those were followed by evening workouts in the 4-6000 meter range). This for 14-18 year olds.
This man thrived on mega-endurance work, and had us convinced that this was the way to success. When we'd complain, he'd tell us of Jeff Kostoff's (Stanford) Xmas day workout. The legend was (and I don't know the veracity of the rumor, but it is plausible) that Kostoff's workout was 5 x 5000 on 50:00. That's 1:00/hundred, 250 times. Junior national qualifying in the mile at the time was about :59 / hundred (16:15). He did that (assuming he got SOME rest between repeats) 15 times. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But he did swim about a 14:40 mile (:53 / 100).
Ogged has been incompetent in the past. Chuckle-snort.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 12:12 PM
I get to chortle, you only get to look.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 12:15 PM
If you can't finish the set, your instructor gives you an "incompete".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 12:15 PM
Do you have other workouts where you're doing, say 30x100 @ 2:40? That is, working on endurance but not so much speed?
I found in rowing that it made sense to treat the two as completely separate problems, and that after long enough working on slow endurance some days and short speed workouts on others, it got much easier to do long workouts fast. Simply starting with a short, fast workout, and trying to keep going longer, on the other hand, was just awful.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 12:23 PM
Thanks for the memories of what it used to be like to be on high school swim team.
Once I came to practice and on the blackboard was written 20x200 @ 5:00. Groan...
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 1:07 PM
The last time I beat anyone in swimming, I still had a flagellum.
Posted by My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 1:22 PM
Let's all think about this phrase: "my swimming textbook".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 1:27 PM
I wonder if ogged bought his "swimming textbook" because he's no longer able to ogle the Swede's ass.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 1:28 PM
My colleague plays underwater hockey- he's somehow affiliated with the "national team," and he talks about a lot of weird workouts they do. Stuff like swimming 75m underwater, resting for 30s, repeating. Just bizarre.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 2:10 PM
Is that 3 x a 25m pool?
Yeesh. At one point I could swim 50m underwater, but that was 100 pounds and a 19 year cigarette habit ago.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:05 PM
Still, I'm hoping that this post, like the post about the Ex kicking my ass, will be an occasion for future chortles at my own past incompetence.
I don't understand. Did you later beat Ex, and now can look fondly back on your childish inability at that time? Do you expect to be able to do 30 X 100 @ 1:40 at some point?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:13 PM
Still, I'm hoping that this post, like the post about the Ex kicking my ass, will be an occasion for future chortles at my own past incompetence. Keep hope alive.
Awhile back one of the new people here, Saheli I think, apologized for seeming to have criticized you. It was impossible at the point to explain to her that Ogged existsto be abused, and that apologies to Ogged are thus really quite inappropriate.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:15 PM
Ogged existsto be abused
John, the fact that you're a senior citizen won't keep me from kicking your ass.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:16 PM
Did you later beat Ex, and now can look fondly back on your childish inability at that time?
Precisely, Timbot, precisely. Ex won't race me anymore, and it wouldn't be very nice of me to race her.
Do you expect to be able to do 30 X 100 @ 1:40 at some point?
Not really. Even in the prime of life, I didn't have big lungs. No endurance, which I'm sure you can understand. But I do expect that 5 x 100 @ 1:40 will seem not very hard some time in the future.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:17 PM
Was this triumph over Ex reported, or were we to infer it from this post? If the latter - Wolfson, is this reasonable?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:20 PM
Not reported. Y'all wouldn't much like this blog if it were about my myriad triumphs.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:23 PM
John, the fact that you're a senior citizen won't keep me from kicking your ass.
ogged is such a valiant warrior, brave and true
Posted by peter snees | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:32 PM
TJ, some things are so painful that I always sort of hope that you don't actually have to train for them, that some people can just do them, other people can't, and I don't have to think about all the pain involved in learning to do it. Swimming long distances under water is one of those things. I see the current world record is 175m without using fins. (Dynamic apnea is the one to look for: all the ones with negative distances involve people swimming, or being carried, straight down.) Ouch.
Of course, something I didn't realise until I learned to dive with SCUBA is that not everyone floats, and the people who don't tend to be able to swim underwater better because they aren't fighting to stay down there.
Posted by Mary | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:33 PM
Mary, do you know how the dynamic apneators stroke?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:37 PM
Nevermind, I found the video.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:38 PM
Kieran Perkins is a freak. More so than Olympic quality athletes in general. If you want something really scary, observe that the world record for the 200 freestyle is only 1:44.06. Granted, they aren't going to be doing five of these in a row...
And LB, I'm not sure if this is counterintuitive or not, but training for endurance usually involves faster intervals and less rest, while if you want to train for speed you swim faster on a slower interval. It still sucks, but in a completely different way.
Posted by Jake | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 3:58 PM
I watched a meet where Larsen Jensen swam (and won) the 1650, then literally got out of the pool and back onto the blocks for the 200.
But yeah, in some ways, the times in the freestyle sprints are even more amazing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 4:06 PM
Jake, if I recall correctly Kieran Perkins once set the 400m world record in the first eight laps of a 1500m race in which he also set the 1500m record. (Interesting fact about Australia for the day: because of Perkins and later Grant Hackett, who have between them been all over the men's 1500m for the last decade, Australia is completely obsessed with that Olympics event. It's always has the most TV viewers for an Olympic event, and is usually one of the top three or four most watched TV segments of that year.)
ogged, I didn't actually know what the stroke looked like. I tend to be more interested in the no-limits apnea, primarily because it's just completely nuts.
Posted by Mary | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 4:24 PM
Mary,
I quite agree! The underwater hockey apparently requires fins. But, frankly, I think the whole idea is preposterous.
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 11-18-05 7:06 PM
When I was in junior high and early high school (mid-80s), and just starting to get ery competitive about swimming, I had an old-school coach who was still heavily invested in the 1970s-syle of massive overtraining (12000 meter workouts were not unheard of in the summer, and those were followed by evening workouts in the 4-6000 meter range). This for 14-18 year olds.
This man thrived on mega-endurance work, and had us convinced that this was the way to success. When we'd complain, he'd tell us of Jeff Kostoff's (Stanford) Xmas day workout. The legend was (and I don't know the veracity of the rumor, but it is plausible) that Kostoff's workout was 5 x 5000 on 50:00. That's 1:00/hundred, 250 times. Junior national qualifying in the mile at the time was about :59 / hundred (16:15). He did that (assuming he got SOME rest between repeats) 15 times. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But he did swim about a 14:40 mile (:53 / 100).
Posted by phred | Link to this comment | 11-19-05 12:46 PM
I remember reading that both Mark Spitz and Don Schollander (multi-medalists) regretted the tremendous amount of hard work they had to do to win.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11-20-05 8:39 AM