14-year old Michael Andrew has smashed his own National Age Group Record in the 200 yard IM by over two seconds, swimming a 1:45.29 to win the event at the NASA Junior Cup in Florida on Wednesday evening.
This meet, hosted by the same team but not the same meet as the NASA Age Group Showcase, has 16 & under and a 17-18 class and runs through Saturday in Clearwater. The 200 IM was Andrew’s only entry on Wednesday, but it was a worthwhile one. His old best and old National Age Group Record in the event was a 1:47.42, set just last week at the NCSA Championships in nearby Orlando.
In the race, Andrew just out-touched a very impressive swim in its own right from Aidan Burns of the Santa Clara Swim Club, who was 2nd in the 15-16 division in 1:45.36. Those swims were the two fastest from across the classifications.
Andrew’s splits, as compared to his times just a week ago:
- NASA 22.26/NCSA 23.28
- NASA 26.13/NCSA 26.68
- NASA 31.20/NCSA 31.42
- NASA 25.70/NCSA 26.04
- NASA 1:45.29/NASA 1:47.44
As the splits show, his times improved on every leg of this race, but the opening butterfly split of 22.26 was just really incredible. There are few 14 year olds in history who can split that fast on a 50 fly flat-start period, let alone leading off an IM.
Andrew, after a 1:47.71 in prelims, now owns the four fastest times in the history of the event, with Gray Umbach being the second-best ever at 1:48.08. Reaching deeper, of the 16 fastest times in the history of the event, 13 of them belong to Andrew.
He’s still got some time to drop to get the 15-16 record, which right now is recognized as a 1:44.03 by Andrew Seliskar in 2013.
If you know that he’s getting an aerobic workout, then what’s the issue? You’ve been throwing around this talk of endurance work, but what measurement of “endurance” are you using? The ability to swim longer distances? VO2 max (actual indicator of aerobic fitness)? The ability to finish stronger in the distances he wants to swim? How will this nebulous “endurance” improve his development if you acknowledge that it’s already being developed? He’s finishing his races strong, so it’s clearly not the issue. So how does “endurance” translate to speed? “Michael Phelps” is not an answer.
Doh– That was supposed to be in response to Easyspeed’s post above this.
Sven, I never said race pace training wasn’t aerobic. If you knew the science behind swimming, you would know that everything is aerobic. And I am not advocating slow swimming, see my comments above…. also, swim results are the best form of scientific data you can have. So if you see a dominant swimmer like Phelps and know he does RP and endurance training, then you have empirical evidence to support your hypothesis thus moving out of the theoretical. So citing results is not ‘getting around arguments’; it’s winning arguments. MA will get stuck and have to do more endurance work at some point. I like the kid, just trying to help him out.
Saying you hope that Peter Andrews wises up is quite condescending. Peter has done quite well by MA’s results. How many thousands of swimmers do the endurance stuff and gotten nowhere? Phelps and Lochte are the exceptions.
Hey Josh Davis. I agree with you: 10×50 @ 1:15 is a great set. Everyone should do it. But you gotta do endurance stuff too. If MA doesn’t, unfortunately, he will get stuck. Hope his dad wises up.
You can’t just say it’s race pace training, so it isn’t aerobic. No set (except maybe balls out 25’s on hight rest) is purely anaerobic. Even the 100 has a huge aerobic component (about 45%, IIRC). So when you train at 100 pace with short rest, you are doing aerobic work, and you’re training BOTH systems to work synchronously. Michael also trains for the 200’s and the 400 IM, so the aerobic component is even more intense there.
Why does his aerobic work have to be done slower and longer? He is getting aerobic work done, and I bet if we tested his VO2 max he’d be up there with any of the high yardage elite 14 year olds. He’s… Read more »
You say that MA will get stuck if he doesn’t do endurance stuff. What do you base that on? Is that just your opinion or you have some scientific research that you can share with us?
Sven –
But my point is, when is he doing any work? I think this is the fourth consecutive weekend he’s been at a meet. I understand they drive to all the meets as well, so it seems to be that he’s been on the road for a month, which is why I question how much time he’s spent training for the drop in his fly time and the corresponding drop to 1:45. And how in the heck has he not seen any detraining occur?
Chest-
He typically swims 1500-2500 a day. At these meets, he’s probably swimming 1500-2500 a day…
He IS training. This is USRPT. He’s fast all the time. No work phase. No rest phase. Fast is his state of being. Every day he goes a little faster, and adapts.
I want to know what Philippe Lucas thinks of that training method? 😆
I’ll repeat myself
We used URSPT for our girls HS swim team this year. ~75 swimmers on USRPT.
31 state qualifiers / 12 summer were summer swim leaguers. Highest in school history and state history reportedly.
Among non-club swimmers, we had 75% personal bests at a meet on Jan 25.
We had 62% two weeks later in a MUCH slower pool at League meet.
Kids swam PRs throughout the season. Saw a kid go from 1:08 to 1:02 in fly in 8 days over two meets.
Kids were happy and ready for practice each day. They bought in to the training completely, Made #USRPT buttons. Ever seen that in traditional training.
It works.
That is 75 and 62 percent of ALL swims, not swimmers.
Josh
Best of luck in May. Hope you do an article on your training program do all can see the details of your hard work.
My quick observation- yes Mr. Andrew is incredibly talented which is part of the reason he is having so much success. But USRPT is prooving in one matter- consistency. Week after week Michael is dropping tons of time.
I can only imagine how much more fun it would make college swimming if more teams used the full method. I would love to see people still dropping time when NCAAs come around. Dual meets could be lightning fast and even more intense. I don’t get why some programs aren’t giving it a whirl?
I only wish this was mainstream when I was still swimming- I would have loved getting best times at more than just one meet a year.