My time (fly) dropped....?

Question

ok, my fly time last year was 36.60 (for 50 meters) and i did a really serious winter swim program, nad i competed and all of tht. now my best time for the same race is 37.26 and yesterday i got a 37.98 and the 2 times before tht i got 39's why did my time drop so much when i trained so hard??

btw: last year, i only got down to 36.60 once, other than tht i usually got 37.10ish and i didnt swim in the spring.. would tht affect my time tht much??

Answer 1

it's ok that you gained time. 2 years ago I had a similar problem. Sometimes when you train really hard you won't improve for a while but in the long run you will be better off having trained hard. So just keep training. Oh and you can try tapering before a meet.

Answer 2

First of all your time didn't drop. Dropping would mean you went a 35 instead of a 36. As for why it increased there could be many reasons. How old are you and how have you grown? If you have just had a growth spurt in the last year you could still be adjusting your stroke to your new body. If you haven't grown you might have plateaued and you'll need to adjust your technique and add more strength until you're faster again.

Also, if you didn't swim all spring and then jumped in this summer it could affect your time that much. Consider this, in the winter your "baseline" for speed was a 36 or 37. Going under 36 would've been good.

Since you didn't swim in the spring your body adjusted to that lack of training and your "baseline" became 39, so from that perspective going 37s is good. The trend of your races indicates that you're fast approaching your winter speed. Don't be discouraged, keep practicing.

Edit:

Tapering is when you do less swimming in the days or weeks leading up to an important meet. The idea is that your muscles will be repaired at a faster rate than usual so you'll be stronger and more rested than usual. This only usually happens when you are an older swimmer (13-14+)  and once a season for your fastest meet (i.e. state, regionals, nationals, etc.) or if you need to make a time to get to a specific meet.