Swimming news – 200 IM 13-14 NAG Record – Reported by Braden Keith:
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 Burnsof 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.
My family and I met the Andrew family at the NASA Showcase meet in 2013. We were truly impressed by their sincerity, genuine kindness and Christian philosophy. Over the past year, we have had the pleasure of getting to know their family and have spent time with them away from the pool a number of times. We consider them true friends.
On occasion since the family made the decision for Michael to turn pro, I have visited this site. What began last June as a largely unfavorable (and quite critical at times) tone to the comments about the decision to turn pro and also about USRPT has taken an interesting turn. Fortunately, the MA SwimSwam commentators have demonstrated a fair… Read more »
Michael, nice work lad! I am interested in your race training sets. I am a 41yr old lunchtime masters swimmer here in San Diego. I train hard and swim about 4000m per day of aerobic base interval training and some sprinting and stroke work but I don’t seem to get significantly faster regardless of what I do. I can just break a minute in 100y free on a good day. I know that is slow by any standards but i enjoy swimming and still want to get relatively faster. (Never swam age group or college and my primary sport for most of my life has been surfing but like swimming now). Is there any specific suggestions you guys could give… Read more »
Enrique we believe in specificity so if you want to be faster over a 100 yard swim then train at the 100 yard pace . We would take our fastest 100 yard time and divide it by 4 so you have the time you need to hold for each length . So if your fastest time is 60 seconds then you will be swimming repeats at 15 seconds .
Rest only 15 seconds between repeats and once you fail to make a repeat on 15 seconds take a 45 second rest then try again.
I believe if you can hold this pace for at least 12 repeats you will lower your 100 yard time.
Obviously technique is… Read more »
What would Jesus do?
Mel
Can you post the family’s email? I know absolutely nothing about MA and his family; all I know is that he is a professional and one of the most versatile young swimmers around. Oh, and not to forget talked about swimmers.
MA has his detractors, as do his parents. The criticism may be borne out of jealousy, maybe out of fear. Whatever people may think, MA’s journey and the decisions that were made by him or on his behalf are incredibly interesting.
Finally, Mel, this is your site; you can remove whatever comments you wish and for whatever reason.
Removing comments isn’t a great precedent, though. What about on sponsored posts? Do dissenting opinions get removed?
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I mean.
If I may critique someone who is way faster than I ever was…
The biggest thing missing from his 200 IM is the underwaters: he almost had none.
Michael Andrew took 12 strokes starting backstroke. David Nolan took 9 strokes in 2011…
Michael Andrew took 17 strokes his last lap. David Nolan took 13 strokes his last lap in 2011…
Distance per stroke was only a slight part of that discrepancy. Mostly, it was David Nolan abusing the underwaters waaaay more than Michael Andrew even tried to.
I removed the comments.
Speculation and criticism is fine, but when someone speculates about personal matters outside the pool, the thread can turn ugly very fast. It is always our hope at SwimSwam that the comments dive deep on data. We learn a lot from our readers, but one negative comment based on hearsay can make the thread spiral.
I’ll ask the Andrew family to comment. They’re nice people, very open. I think they’ll weigh in here.
Good call Mel.
I don’t get it. How can he be that much faster in a week? His training is not geared towards tapering so one would assume that he was equally prepared. Physiologically this isn’t making sense to me.
JMan… just throwing out possibilities-
– race schedule… He swam a heavy program at NCSA’s, maybe the 2IM set up better for him at the NASA meet.
– learning… maybe he tried something new and learned at NCSA’s and was able to put it together at NASA.
– poor race plan at NCSA’s… He took it out almost a second faster at NASA. Maybe by taking it out slower/more relaxed he wasn’t able to get into his race pace groove. Some people need to get out quick or they never get going.
Yes, those are possiblities. I guess i’m thinking even further than that. He drops time almost every time he swims and sometimes the drops are huge. I’m sure he is learning a lot every time he races. But those drops just don’t make sense to me physiologically.
I guess he’ll swim at the NASA showcase classic. it’ll be exciting. Vinny Marciano will also be making the trip to the meet to get his NAG records back.