Tips for Distance Races

小臭贝

This week’s Speedo Tip of the Week comes from Chris Thompson, the American record holder and 2000 Olympic bronze medalist in the 1500m free. Thompson offers some advice on swimming distance races.

Thompson’s Tip:
Distance swimming is not an easy discipline to master. In order to be successful, I'd first recommend that you try swimming distance races in a few different ways. First, try going out hard at the beginning of the race and see how you hold on. (We call this positive splitting). The next time you swim, try going out at a more controlled pace, or even a little slower, and see if you can pick up your pace as the race progresses. (We call this negative splitting). There have been many successful distance swimmers who swim both ways. You can also try a third option where you start the race at a solid speed and just maintain it the whole way. (We call this even splitting). I've tried all three techniques many times in my career.

Once you figure out what kind of distance swimmer you are – a positive splitter, a negative splitter, or an even splitter – then you will be able to focus on that type of training in your workouts. Also, it is very important that you talk to your coaches about it. They will be able to give you input as to how you should be training and what sort of pacing would be best for you.

Finally, just make sure you are calm. If you start out a distance race with too high of an energy output, you are going to be in trouble late in the race. The best advice I can give you though, is just to keep practicing distance racing. In workouts, really go out there and swim the best you can on the distance sets and take every opportunity to swim distance races at competitions. Distance swimming, as with anything in life, is easier with experience.