The FAF AFAP Digest

Despite being totally sleep deprived, my body was still sufficiently rested, tapered, pampered, massaged etc. to swim fast. I feel like I really nailed the taper with significant time drops. Swam faster than I though I would. In fact, I should probably just retire from SCY now, as I doubt I'll ever swim faster. lol All time drops are "taper drops" because I've swum every event except the 100 IM in B70s. (I note this because Jimby thinks all my recent improvements are due to B70 use.)

100 fly: 1:01.33

Previous PB was 1:04.2 (swam that at Austin in a Pro and at the Sprint Classic in a B70). I swam this in heat 1 by myself. Had the same reaction as the 50 free. I just could not believe my time. I was hoping to go a 1:03. Shocked and super happy. My splits were 28.46/32.87. Rigor mortis set in, as usual, with about 10 yards to go. Mini-Fort says I just have to chop off one second to make sectionals. I tried to explain that this was a once in a lifetime taper kind of thing and I wasn't going to hop in and do this next month. Yeesh!

50 back: 28.52

Previous best was a 29.1 in September, and I was secretly hoping for a 28.9. Didn't have the best turn and was on the lane line for a bit of the second length. Still very very happy with the time.

100 back: 1:02.84

Previous best was 1:04.7 (did this in a Pro in Austin and in a B70 in September) and I was hoping for a high 1:03 or so. Did this as a split request in the 200 back. (The officials checked the rules and found the split request form.) I didn't have much time to recover after the 50 back. Maybe 35 minutes. I would really have preferred an hour or even 2 hours. That's the one disadvantage of tapering for a regional meet as opposed to Nats -- you just don't get the same amount of rest between events. This event hurt the most of all my races, probably because I was very very tired. Splits were 30.24/32.60. Forumite Karlene was kind enough to give me my splits and times right when I hopped (er, dragged myself) out of the pool.

I consider this race a moral victory. I've been wanting to beat my 12 year old time of 1:04.0 for awhile. So now I'm faster than when I was 12. lol

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Taper Reflections/Thoughts:

1. Did 6 PBs at this meet. I've done this before at a taper meet, but I think some of the PBs were just natural improvement, increased racing experience, or just not much experience in a given course. But I've never dropped this much time across every event before. I have to conclude that this means I really hit my taper right. The biggest change I made was in week 1 of the taper. I followed Chris' advice to keep yardage up (reduce only a bit), cut aerobic work and cut speed work. In prior tapers, I've increased speed work in week 1 and reduced yardage. I also got much more rest/sleep than usual during taper (took a lot of "morning naps"). This may have factored into the results as well.

2. The Auburn pool was very fast. It was a double bulkhead pool. Didn't seem to bother me. I did have to peek to spot the wall in the 50 free though.

3. I'm still struggling on my backstroke turns in yards. This meet, I took 3 strokes before flipping over instead of the 2 from my last meet. I guess it worked, but I felt like I had to take short strokes and was tentative on the turns. Also, I notice with my B70, I'm not getting as deep on my starts and turns and popping up sooner. Ande tells me I need to affirmatively try to go deeper and use the "suit surge." I'm definitely not doing that right now.

3. The SCY season is in the books for me. I'm only going to swim a few events at Zones for fun. Hopefully, my times will hold up decently with those to be posted at Clovis. I'm just going to focus on SCM and LCM now, which I vastly prefer anyway. Whenever I swim backstroke in yards, I just think "another damn wall?!" Walls upset my rhythm and help tall people more than us shorter types.

4. I have to say that I really enjoyed tapering at an unconventional time. I'm not a winter person and it gave me something to keep me occupied and focused on over these dreary months. Now, I'm really ready to turn back to some cross training and running outdoors. This is really not a bad way to go!

5. Tapering is hard work. It requires a lot of commitment to getting enough rest, sleep, etc. I'm really looking forward to going back to not worrying about whether I feel tired or sore and doing whatever I want to do. I always feel like I've gotten a "get out of jail free" card when taper time is over.

6. A couple people have asked me what I think accounts for the significant time drops I've had since Austin. In a nutshell, I think it's more intense training. I've generally been swimming 5x a week. When in the pool, I've done more aerobic work and more intense kick sets. And I've just done more weights/drylands, though I can still improve in this area. So, as I said recently on the SFF thread, "more is more" seems to have worked for me.

7. Sandbagging seems to agree with me. I swam all my 100s completely by myself with no one to "race." Didn't seem to matter. In general, I prefer just swimming my own race. I don't think having someone right next to me makes all that much difference.

8. 100 fly thoughts: One reason I was so surprised with my time is that I have not been training for the 100 fly. If you've read my blog, you'll know that I've mostly just been doing 25s with some 50s and fly in IMs thrown in. Last October, I tried to do longer fly sets to improve my endurance in the 100 fly, but suffered immediate shoulder pain. So I went back to 25s and 50s. Didn't seem to hurt me that much. Also, for the fin critics out there, I will note that I NEVER swim fly without fins. So pfffftttt. Works for me and keeps my shoulders healthy! I'm glad I've marched to my own drummer on this issue and not accepted conventional wisdom.

Oh, and no matter how much Puff bugs me, I will never swim a 200 fly.

Here are the complete results:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/~bailelc/2009.results.htm