200 yrd free splits

"Matt" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

what are some good splits to go in a 200 yrd free to get a time of 2:10 or better? any suggestions
to help drop even the slightest bit of time?

thanks,

-matt

Hold :32.5 per 50.

To swim faster in a meet, swim faster in practice.

As I mentioned to a previous poster on a similar topic, the quickest gains to be made are improving
efficiency of dive, turns and finish eg good streamline, no breath on first stroke after dive or
turn, spotting the fturns and finish etc. Paul "Matt" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

what are some good splits to go in a 200 yrd free to get a time of 2:10 or better? any suggestions
to help drop even the slightest bit of time?

thanks,

-matt

In article <[email hidden]>, "L. Murphy"

Quoted message said:

Matt,

I think that you already asked a question about this event before and I responded to it but I
guess I can mention some other things. This actually was probably my best event and was where I
got my All-America standard.

Some quick pointers: 1) Think of this race as the one race that is basically the longest hard-core
sprint that you will ever do. 2) Think of the race in 2 parts and then in 4 parts, broken up by
100's and then broken up by 50's. 3) Realize that you need both speed and stamina for this race.
4) Believe that this actually may be one of the hardest events to swim because of strategy.

You need to think about the race broken up by 100's first in the light of trying to make your
splits close together but realizing that you will probably never negative split. I always thought
that your second 100 should be about 2 seconds slower than your first 100 especially if you were a
pure sprinter. If you want to go a 2:10 then that would mean that your 100's in my opinion would
be at about 1:04 and then 1:06. Remember, the first 100 can automatically be faster because of the
dive. They always want to point out in here and on "help" sites that off the dive and the wall you
will be going your fastest. That is true. Go ahead and embrace that first initial umph. The key
here is that you don't want to go out so hard (like on a 50) that you will break yourself in the
second 100. I think you will see this when I illustrate it by
50s.

By 50's, I have always thought that your first 50 may be the fastest but with the least amount of
effort, your second 50 should be the one where you taper off and just swim to hold, the third
should be a build 50 and the fourth should be with whatever you have left in the tank. Again, the
key is that on the first 50 you want to embrace the speed off the dive and the energy you have
from being fresh and not tired but not to go so all-out that you kill yourself in the end. In
percentages it would be like you are going 95-98% on your 1st 50, about 90% on your second,
building to 95% on your third and all out on your 4th. (eventhough you will pry be slower overall
because of fatigue).

A few last things to think about: 1) This is technically a sprint so treat it as such but with a
little more brainpower. You should be thinking about things like your turns and your dive as you
would on a 50 free. You should try to get off the blocks quick just like in a pure sprint. 2) Like
in every race over a 50 or 100 free(maybe) think about pacing. Look at what the other good
swimmers are doing during the race. You may be able to swim with one guy and "break" him at the
end or you may have to go as fast you can to hopefully stay ahead of him by the end. 3) With this,
try the race a couple times doing different strategies and see which one gives you better results.
You can try to go out really fast and hold to the end or you can try to totally pace it out and
see how you do.

Again, I hope this helps.

Thanks, LM

Great comments - I wish I'd seen this back when I was in college. I was primarily a 200 flyer, and
was able to hang with all our middle distance freestylers just fine in practice, but I could never
get the 200 free together in a racing situation. I considered it several magnitudes more difficult
(and tiring) than the 200 fly - I think some of the strategies you suggest might have made the
difference!