Reply To: USRPT for 12&unders
I have a daughter that just started with race pace training at Christmas. She went to Far Westerns as a 10 yr old this past month. She bettered her 50 and 100 free but had a dismal 200 and 500 free (added 30 seconds collectively). She flat out died and looked miserably out of shape. After talking with her coaches, they said they tapered her for almost 3 weeks and that’s what they attributed that to.
I’m still concerned with yardage though. We have spoken with a couple of swimmers folks who are personally using race pace. They are homeschooled and elite swimmers, and the one 10 year old is swimming approx 3500 yards a day (2 practices a day) and pretty much all at race pace. This swimmer also won all but 1 of her races at Far Westerns.
As a mom, I get not wanting to push kids to swim with kids that are too much older than them but when I have a kid who wants to swim the 200,500, and now the 1000 (turned 11 last week), it’s hard for me to watch her drown in the middles distance events.
Thoughts? Also, she and a couple of her teammates are work horses and not afraid to do more yardage, etc. I personally love this coach, but asking him to train 20-40 age groupers at race pace seems nearly impossible. And then when they aren’t swimming more than 1000 yards at race pace, how is she to prepare for her events? Sorry for the book, just a bit confused and frustrated.
