I recently downloaded the FINA results from the previous World Masters Swimming Championships, held at Stanford CA in 2006. I find it mind boggling how fast the men are in the 45-49 age group, the swimmers with whom I’ll have to compete against for the first time in 2008. For example (all LCM times): 53 swam sub-28 second 50m FS (fastest was 24.29), 35 swam sub-1 minute 100m FS (fastest was 54.41), one Brazilian swam the 200m FS under 2 minutes … and on it goes.
I couldn’t help but wonder … “Who the heck are these guys???”. In doing a bit of Google searching, I am across Ande Rasmussen and his Swim Faster Faster Tips. The tips are presented in a few different forms … the previous link is to a very long thread on the US Masters web site where the tips are interspersed with commentary. A listing of just the tips is found at www.swimfasterfaster.com (hosted on Yahoo Sports).
Be prepared for a lot of reading … but the tips are very good. Ande is in the ‘young’ 40’s group … one of his tips is about setting goals … I believe his goal for last year was breaking 2:00 minutes in the 200 IM, which he did.
To see what “these guys” train like, have a look at Ande’s daily workout postings.
Enjoy!