Subject: Swimming Exhaustion Wall at 200 yds In January, I decided to do an olympic distance in June since I already had a good biking and running foundation. I started swimming the second week of January (one hour, two nights per week) and initally found myslef struggling just to make it to the other side of the pool; it had been more than 30 years since I swam laps. After several weeks, I was able to swim 200 yds non-stop and was satisfied with my progress. A few weeks later however, I had hit a wall and could not move beyond swimming 200 yds at a time without being completely out of breath. Completely frustrated, I decided to give it one more week of swim training before considering a switch to the sprint distance. Something happened and I took off and swam 1,000 yds non-stop and was able to swim 1,000 yds non-stop the following night. I was psyched, but this, however, only lasted that one week. The following weeks I am back to that 200 yd wall and I am sucking wind after each 200 yd swim. Nothing has changed in diet, workout routine, sleep, or anything else that I can identify in the weeks leading up to that distance or the weeks following. Since January, my workouts consisted of strentgh training, biking and running on Mon; swimming on Tues; biking/running on Weds; swim on Thurs; and a long run on Sat with Fridays and Sundays being my off days. This week I have tried to reduce some of the double workouts that I have normally done for the past year at the gym. My thinking is that I may not be giving my body enough time to recover. It may sound like a motivation issue, but it's not. I am now more motivated to complete the Olympic distance, but just need ot break that barrier again. Any thoughts or suggestions anyone may have are welcome. Thanks, Scott |