The Amazing Katie Ledecky, See Us At London Tri & Our Cilla Black Tribute
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Three items for you this week:
Katie Ledecky 1500m World Record
First up, we hope you were lucky enough to see Katie Ledecky's performances at the World Championships in Kazan this week. She's already won the 200m, 400 and 1500m freestyle (and a relay gold!) - who can stop her winning the 800m tomorrow night too?
Let's pick out our favourite pool event - the 1500m freestyle. Katie broke the world record twice during this meet, once in the heats and then again in the final (before qualifying for the 200m freestyle final just 20 minutes later!).
Her performance (15:27.71) in the heats was remarkable because she said she wasn't trying very hard. In her own words: “It did feel pretty easy, I wasn’t kicking much”. Her coach Coach Bruce Gemmell told her to swim 900 meters easy, build for 300 meters then choose the pace for the final 300 meters.
Let's look at how she actually paced it with the splits for every 100m:
If we ignore the first 100m (dive start) and last 100m (sprint finish) then every 100m was within plus or minus half a second. Amazing pacing skills!
Our take-home point for you is that when we pace out a swim as perfectly as that, it can feel very 'do-able', or even 'easy'. Things only really hurt when we start too fast and then are forced to slow down - either in a race or though a training set.
The sharp eyed amongst you might also have noticed Katie's ability to switch between a two beat and six beat kick, as we discussed last week on the blog. Another phenomenal skill.
We'll Be At The London Triathlon
Swim Smooth's Adam Young and the UK coaching team will be at the London Triathlon this weekend at the ExCel in docklands. This is the largest triathlon in the world with over 13,000 taking part!
Come and say hi on the Swim Smooth Stand, and check out the new Swim Smooth Coaching System. If you have any footage of yourself swimming then bring it along on a memory stick - Adam and the team will take a look at your stroke and give you some feedback on how to improve.
Cilla Black - A Life Well Lived
Finally, we were very sad to hear of the passing of UK entertainer Cilla Black this week. It's a little known fact that our head Coach Paul Newsome appeared on the Christmas Edition of Blind Date in 2001 - check out his truly shocking skinsuit and bleached hair in the video clip here:
https://vimeo.com/135334082
We had a lorra lorra laughs Cilla.
Swim Smooth
Katie Ledecky 1500m World Record
First up, we hope you were lucky enough to see Katie Ledecky's performances at the World Championships in Kazan this week. She's already won the 200m, 400 and 1500m freestyle (and a relay gold!) - who can stop her winning the 800m tomorrow night too?
Let's pick out our favourite pool event - the 1500m freestyle. Katie broke the world record twice during this meet, once in the heats and then again in the final (before qualifying for the 200m freestyle final just 20 minutes later!).
Her performance (15:27.71) in the heats was remarkable because she said she wasn't trying very hard. In her own words: “It did feel pretty easy, I wasn’t kicking much”. Her coach Coach Bruce Gemmell told her to swim 900 meters easy, build for 300 meters then choose the pace for the final 300 meters.
Let's look at how she actually paced it with the splits for every 100m:
| 100m | 0:59.1 | 900m | 1:02.5 | |
| 200m | 1:02.7 | 1000m | 1:01.8 | |
| 300m | 1:02.2 | 1100m | 1:02.3 | |
| 400m | 1:02.4 | 1200m | 1:01.7 | |
| 500m | 1:02.5 | 1300m | 1:01.9 | |
| 600m | 1:02.2 | 1400m | 1:02.0 | |
| 700m | 1:02.2 | 1500m | 1:00.2 | |
| 800m | 1:01.9 |
If we ignore the first 100m (dive start) and last 100m (sprint finish) then every 100m was within plus or minus half a second. Amazing pacing skills!
Our take-home point for you is that when we pace out a swim as perfectly as that, it can feel very 'do-able', or even 'easy'. Things only really hurt when we start too fast and then are forced to slow down - either in a race or though a training set.
The sharp eyed amongst you might also have noticed Katie's ability to switch between a two beat and six beat kick, as we discussed last week on the blog. Another phenomenal skill.
We'll Be At The London Triathlon
Swim Smooth's Adam Young and the UK coaching team will be at the London Triathlon this weekend at the ExCel in docklands. This is the largest triathlon in the world with over 13,000 taking part!
Come and say hi on the Swim Smooth Stand, and check out the new Swim Smooth Coaching System. If you have any footage of yourself swimming then bring it along on a memory stick - Adam and the team will take a look at your stroke and give you some feedback on how to improve.
Cilla Black - A Life Well Lived
Finally, we were very sad to hear of the passing of UK entertainer Cilla Black this week. It's a little known fact that our head Coach Paul Newsome appeared on the Christmas Edition of Blind Date in 2001 - check out his truly shocking skinsuit and bleached hair in the video clip here:
https://vimeo.com/135334082
We had a lorra lorra laughs Cilla.
Swim Smooth