A year ago, in the spring of 2012, there was a little flurry of swimmers who were trying their hands in the 400 long course meter butterfly. First, Kathleen Hersey swam a 4:40, then Kaia Simmonds swam a 4:45.
As painful as 400 butterflies might be, Louisville’s Gisselle Kohoyda might have found an even more painful race – well, more painful for those who have to watch it. At last week’s Card Throwdown, the Louisville-hosted long course kickoff meet, Kohoyda swam a 22:25.11 in a 1500 long course meters breaststroke.
She was holding mainly 1:30’s, with the occasional 1:31, and in her words “made a statement” by going three 1:29’s, and a 1:27 on the last 400 meters.
Is this a good time for a 1500 breaststroke? We honestly have no idea. Hard to imagine that it’s a bad time. Again, in Kohoyda’s words: “it wasn’t terrible.” No word on how her legs felt at the end.
Kohoyda, who is going into her senior season at Louisville, placed 4th at the 2012 NCAA Championships in the 200 yard breaststroke.
Anyone else willing to give it a shot?
I just extrapolated breaststroke records for men from 50m, 100m and 200m upwards, based on the freestyle records for long-course and came up with 18.05 (men).
Jon Urbanchek and I began T-30 swims in stroke in the late 1980’s. After some disasters with fly, we dropped that stroke (they became better 30 minute flyers but not so good at the 50-200). Distances were set to accomplish a 30 minute steady state swim to determine our aerobic paces (white, pink, red, blue, and purple). I know we had several female swimmers hold 1:28-1:29 averages for a 30 minute swim, long course. The latest was Angela Chokran. Anyone who has seen Gisselle swim knows she has a wonderful, technically efficient stroke – well suited for a great distance swim.
I would like to see someone try the 1500 m corkscrew. That would be something to brag about.
Yeah, especially if it was corkscrewing the same direction for the entire 1500 meters.
I say there should be more events in swimming to be able to set American records. Running has a bunch of distances that are not internationally raced (the mile, 600 meters, etc.) that one can set an American record in. Some of them to me make sense like an 800 IM since we do swim 200’s of each stroke. Or an 800 medley relay. Others would be like what Michigan did in a meet last winter with a 150 IM (used to be fly, back, free).
My club coach told me about a teammate (now a prominent assistant coach at major school) who showed up to practice walking straight from the bars and did a 3,000 fly for time. Went sub 30 min.
Of course through the course of time that incredible feat could have been inflated or even made up … who knows
A guy who trained with us used to do freestyle sets on brst when he injured my shoulders. Things like 5x400m on 5:45 / 20×100’s on 1:40. Epic distance training on brst but the last 50 of his 200 was always crazy strong.
There is actually an English Channel swimming record for butterfly. The distance is approx. 35’400m.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2175526.stm
Also, I guy that used to train on my team (and was at one stage a world-ranked 50m and 100m fly (short course meters) swimmer) did a 1500m fly in his late teens in 19 minutes and thirty something….
I like it.
I don’t know about records but it surely should be a swim proficiency achievement for everyone. Someone recently swam the channel all in breastroke.
That was sometimes the only way I could get boys to do breastroke – to say how mortifying it was for soldiers to fail this test after passing all the challenges ( big boy things) . To be left on the other side of the river or to be doing a lame floppy foot thing in the pool whilst everybody was watching. To be beaten by the girls . That they needed the leg work to keep their gun above water.
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