|
For someone who swims 18 hours a week on a club team that's geared towards competitive swimming, I couldn't care less about swimming competitively.
When I was nine, I wanted to be the next Michael Phelps. When I was 11 I wanted to at least make the Olympics. By 13 I realized that a) Olympics involves swimming for like eight hours a day, and b) there is very little chance someone could have a successful future in swimming for very long, and decided I'd probably drop it after college. By 15, I decided I'd probably drop it after high school, because swimming sucks.
It's a great workout and that's been the main, and for the last few years the only reason I've been putting 11, then 14, and now 18 hours weekly into this goddamn sport. It enables me to eat like a hippo without getting diabetes or even gaining a pound, at the cost of three hours of my life, six days a week.
Swim meets are really just the icing on the cake, showing me that before I was a little bit slower, now I'm a little bit faster, and otherwise being right around average. And otherwise it's just the joy of seeing the kind of ridiculous shit that only happens when you lock people up in a large room for seven hours with a box of water in the middle (average time spent in said box: ~10 mins). It's the perfect psychological aspect that combines isolation and lack of isolation into one glorious clusterfuck.
But now that senior year of high school is here and there's only six months left until the last time in my life that I participate in a swim meet, I realize I can't leave as the guy who did this for ten years, showed no results, and dropped it as soon as he got out of highschool. Who's going to remember that? That's a waste of what is currently 11% of my life.
No. I have to put some effort into showcasing my apathy. But first an explanation.
Background
So here's what I've learned over ten years.
Freestyle and Front Crawl are two different things. When you watch freestyle at the Olympics, because there is no other event where any person should ever be watching competitive swimming, everyone does front crawl. It's the fastest and arguably the most efficient way to swim. Everyone does it at the triathlon for that exact reason - it's the most logical way to get from point A to point B when you need to compromise between speed and energy.
Technically in freestyle you can do any stroke you want, but since the object of swimming is to go fast, and front crawl is the fastest stroke there is, everyone does it.
Since 100% of freestyle is the front crawl, this is also why events in every stroke that aren't freestyle last a maximum of 200 meters. The IM goes to 400, but that's just 100 meters of every stroke. Freestyle goes to 1500, and longer swims (sometimes) at triathlons and open swims because everyone's going to do freestyle anyway.
Then you have butterfly, which is an abomination of nature and why nobody ever swims butterfly outside of a pool. It's not even great looking to show off because fuck it.
Back in the 1950's some cunning gentleman realized you could swim breaststroke faster if you recover your arms above the water instead of below it (at the cost of being much more tired), and nothing in the rules said you couldn't do this, so everyone started doing it until they split breaststroke and butterfly in the 1970's, and now we have a bullshit stroke that shouldn't exist.
It's actually the second fastest stroke after freestyle, but it's horribly inefficient and makes you very tired.
Evil Plan
So nobody ever needs to swim more than 200 meters of butterfly because nobody requires it because even people whose claim their main stroke is butterfly, hate swimming butterfly. It's only there because a bunch of smartasses did it for about 20 years. I've never had to swim more than 600 meters uninterrupted. Compared to about 3000 for freestyle.
On the other hand the 1500 meter freestyle is an event. People do it, people practice for it, and there are even swim meets where the only event is the fucking 1500, or its yards-version, the 1650. Because 1500 meters of front crawl is still a pain in the ass, but it's tolerable and expected.
In freestyle, you can swim any stroke you want as long as you swim the same one for the duration of the race.
So for the last meet of the season, which is conveniently located on the fourth anniversary of StarCraft II - July 27, 2014 - I'm going to swim the 1500 free, doing butterfly.
It's not illegal by the rules of freestyle, and it's completely memorable because nobody else is stupid enough to do it.
Starting the ZFG Journey
The New Jersey Long Course Junior Olympics of July 24-27 exists to take people who go fast, and make them go even faster. It's four days of sitting in the large room for about five hours a day, but the flip side is that you don't have to go to all four days because you don't qualify for most of the events, and if you do, you're probably swim Jesus and are masochistic enough to enjoy the experience.
Now I haven't qualified for LCJO's since 2008, which I'm happy with because I don't care about swimming competitively and I'd rather spend the four days at home actually enjoying the summer. But this time I'm making the exception.
My 1500m free time is currently 19:36 as of this afternoon. To achieve my master plan, I have to first get into LCJO's, where they want 18 minutes flat. In a sport where a fraction of a second makes all the difference, I intend to cut 96 seconds in six months. For comparison, I dropped 20 seconds over a period of one year.
Once I'm in there, of course, I can swim as slow as I want, which is great, because I won't make either of those times doing butterfly.
Otherwise I'm all set:
1) My coach is onboard with the idea. I don't know if he thinks I'm serious yet, but I'm going to try a 1650 fly tomorrow to see if I can finish (legally of course. You can do any distance doing anything because of conservation of momentum; the real challenge is to not get disqualified in order to finish the entire 1500 meters)
2) My friends are more than onboard with the idea. Nobody has done this, nobody is doing this, and nobody will do this, because if there's one thing you need to understand about this blog, is that there is absolutely no reason to do this unless you're in my specific position. Which means that if I pull this off, I'll be remembered for a good few years, and at least I'll be a rumor after that. And the attention whore in me likes that.
3) My parents think I'm suicidal (I think my coach does too), which is great, because this means it'll be the entertainment for the poor souls who are forced to spend a few hours in the large room with the box of water in the middle. The butterfly, not... not the suicidal bit.
4) Right now I can race the 1500 with a 1:18.4 per 100 meters (for a total of 19:36). In practice I can hold about 1:22 per 100 meters indefinitely. At 18 minutes I need to go 1:12.0, which means going about 1:16 indefinitely in practice, or 1:15 to really be safe.
5) Dropping seven seconds is still a lot, so I created this blog to look like more of an asshole if I don't make it by July. There's no better motivation than holding your goal to a bunch of strangers on the Internet.
That said, I'm ready.
I'm ready to start caring just so I can show people that I don't care.
|
United States23455 Posts
As a person that swam all through high school, you are insane! I hated the 200 fly.
Best of luck to you though let me know how it goes!
|
Good luck. I'd like to hear how it goes too.
|
T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
What are your other times? I dropped swimming after high school and I'm in agreement with the first paragraph
|
Butterfly for such a long distance is brutal. When I learnt a bit of swimming like 4 years ago, I could do front crawl perpetually, but 50m of butterfly made my abs hurt already. Good luck with your endeavours. It's always nice to troll around like this. When everybody tries to win seriously, things get boring.
Also, would like to say that I found the history of the different strokes to be very interesting.
|
On January 27 2014 12:08 T.O.P. wrote:
What are your other times? I dropped swimming after high school and I'm in agreement with the first paragraph
200 yard backstroke - 2:19. 100 is 1:05-ish. I'm a backstroker although I've come to hate not being able to see where I'm going. This is probably the only events where I'm above the median.
I've never been good at breaststroke and consider it a waste of time. Although it's nice for recovery during an IM.
Fly I can do 1:03 for a 100, maybe 2:20-ish for 200, but that's lack of practice and experience, not simply stamina. I can do fly for a very long time (at least 600), just very slowly.
The free events I've done this month: 50 (27.63), 100 (59.75), 200 (2:13.04), 500 (5:37), and 1650 (19:36). Below average in sprints, average and rising with distance because I've come to love beating people by exhaustion.
Long course season ended in July and I forgot all my 50-meter times by August.
On January 27 2014 12:10 Pangpootata wrote:
Butterfly for such a long distance is brutal. When I learnt a bit of swimming like 4 years ago, I could do front crawl perpetually, but 50m of butterfly made my abs hurt already. Good luck with your endeavours. It's always nice to troll around like this. When everybody tries to win seriously, things get boring.
Also, would like to say that I found the history of the different strokes to be very interesting.
I know that feel all too well, although it's mostly my arms now. And the history of the strokes is excellent, because now we all know why butterfly is still a thing despite being completely retarded 
Thanks for all your support guys!
|
Have you even done a ~1500 fly for practice? That would be hard to even finish and if you like totally break down and take forever and flop around like a dying fish thats probably less cool and people will get annoyed that you are delaying the meet.
|
On January 27 2014 12:29 sob3k wrote:
Have you even done a 1500 fly for practice? That would be hard to even finish and if you like totally break down and take forever and flop around like a dying fish thats probably less cool and people will get annoyed that you are delaying the meet.
I've done a 3000 free and a 2400 IM, and intend to do a 1650 fly tomorrow for practice. I'll probably do more over time, but the goal being to simply finish at a reasonable pace, not to break any records.
Trust me, a meet that lasts five hours with everyone who isn't in the 1500 going home since it's the last event, nobody's going to be pissed at a fifteen-minute delay, if that.
|
United States4883 Posts
I really love this blog lol. I never did swimming, was never interested in it, but I love the passionate apathy reflected in this blog. I have always thought the butterfly was a ridiculous and terrible stroke though.
|
this is absolutely ridiculous omg fly is the worst
|
i remember doing a 10x100 fly in practice once when i used to swim. its my worst stroke and the 200 fly was one of my least favorite events to swim at meets (my coach would sometimes sign me up)
|
the fastest style is actually dolphin kicks while diving.
Which is why in freestyle you get a DQ if you have all parts of your body submerged after 15 meters. Or at least you should if the referees know their shit.
Also, Butterfly has exactly one use that you will not discover until you drop competetive swimming and the 3 hours a day club provided pools.
It cleans up a lane in public pools in about 10 seconds, making everyone flee in terror and then you can swim in peace without slaloming around drowning people.
They cant even be mad at you, you are just training a legit stroke.
|
Mad respect
I was a sprinter back in high school, and I cannot even fathom doing the Butterfly for more than 200 LOL
|
keep at it 3 times a week and it will make you live until 100.
youre not doing it for results you are doing it for yourself. who the f* cares about high school swimming medals?? you are in great shape, show lots of dedication and thats awesome. Dont count it as a waste of time.
|
I'm not sure how you can swim so much butterfly when you are so slow but you should just plan on doing 15 meters under water off every wall, that will be easiest.
|
That would be pretty cool. I swam for 3-4 years in some pretty casual swim club, 2 hours twice a week... Fly was my best stroke, I regularly got top 3 in swim meets in the 100m fly. But holy, was that ever tiring. Even cutting the pace down a lot, I feel like anything past 300m would just feel like death.
I remember that twice a year we had the one mile distance swim, and I swam at about 27:00~ minutes (Remember I was 15-16 and swam only twice a week... That converts to a little over 25 minutes for the 1500m freestyle), and holy was that brutal. I wish the best of luck to you, seeing a sub 20 minute 1500m freestyle at highschool level in our swim club would have been very impressive... Now seeing that in fly, that'd be really cool.
Seriously, I hope you have the motivation to work hard, and you work to swim the fly too, and not just troll and finish 5 minutes behind the field. Good luck.
|
On January 28 2014 00:03 Kevin_Sorbo wrote:
keep at it 3 times a week and it will make you live until 100.
youre not doing it for results you are doing it for yourself. who the f* cares about high school swimming medals?? you are in great shape, show lots of dedication and thats awesome. Dont count it as a waste of time.
Club swimming. High school swimming is a dozen meets concentrated into one month, there's no way I'm doing that.
You see, I eat a lot because I swim a lot and need to get energy, but then I need to swim more to burn off all the food. It's a vicious cycle of eating and swimming and while it does keep me in shape, I'd rather start doing shorter, higher intensity workouts at the gym that don't take so much time out of my life.
On January 28 2014 01:20 hellokitty[hk] wrote:
I'm not sure how you can swim so much butterfly when you are so slow but you should just plan on doing 15 meters under water off every wall, that will be easiest.
My kick is terrible, but I can upper body everything
On January 28 2014 02:00 FiWiFaKi wrote:
That would be pretty cool. I swam for 3-4 years in some pretty casual swim club, 2 hours twice a week... Fly was my best stroke, I regularly got top 3 in swim meets in the 100m fly. But holy, was that ever tiring. Even cutting the pace down a lot, I feel like anything past 300m would just feel like death.
I remember that twice a year we had the one mile distance swim, and I swam at about 27:00~ minutes (Remember I was 15-16 and swam only twice a week... That converts to a little over 25 minutes for the 1500m freestyle), and holy was that brutal. I wish the best of luck to you, seeing a sub 20 minute 1500m freestyle at highschool level in our swim club would have been very impressive... Now seeing that in fly, that'd be really cool.
Seriously, I hope you have the motivation to work hard, and you work to swim the fly too, and not just troll and finish 5 minutes behind the field. Good luck.
For four hours a week, 25-27 is pretty amazing! I don't think I'd manage to break 30 on four hours a week.
There's no way I'm going under 20 in the fly. But we'll see where that goes. I'll probably ramp up the fly training over the summer, right now all of my efforts are going into tryharding freestyle.
I'll post anything interesting that comes along in the next few weeks.
|
if you do butterfly properly, ist actually not that bad.
But its very difficult to have proper arm recovery while keeping proper posture during the flying part.
Often the timing is off and the middle body drops into water first or the arms are not being thrown and then dont have the recovery at all.
i do swim for fun ever since i can remember. I do swim in a club and they did teach me a surprisingly good techique considering that i was never meant to go pro.
If i dont go swimming for 3 days, i just get pissed off.
It keeps me in better shape than 95% of the people i see around me, it makes for a good looking male body actually, it enables me to overeat a bit, trains willpower.
I never find it boring, there is always something to improve.
Oh and it doesnt ruin bones and stuff, i cant actually run regulary anymore because my knees are allready damaged from running.
|
Wow, swimming that much butterfly seems like such a stupid idea. Good luck!
|
As someone who has won state in HS, swam in college and does the occasional long distance swim- this is possible, but insanely difficult based off the times you posted. Though in your defense, a lot of times in my head are yard times, so its tough to translate it to meters since I stopped swimming long course after high school...
My only advice would be to really work on your butterfly form. This is not a 'man-up' accomplishment, but rather a testament to how efficient your butterfly is. People think butterfly is difficult because they have a bad stroke and its made apparent when you do butterfly- you sink. Your hips drop, you go vertical and its GG.
I would also really stress that you be fairly confident that you can complete this.. because based off the times you posted, this will take a normally 18 minute race, and turn it into like a 25-30 minute race if you're not very fast... so.. try to be considerate of other people...
Good Luck!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
