In sports there seems to be an on-going question around eras and who is the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of all time) and what any of that means.  These are the “Is LeBron James ‘better’ than Michael Jordan?” type discussions that occur in various guises and flavors depending on sport and what has recently occurred in that sport.

In team sports the question is quite difficult, but in individual sports it seems less so.  You don’t get a lot of “Is Roger Bannister (3:59.4) faster than Hicham El Guerrouj (3:43.13) over one mile?” as the times tell the tail.  You do occasionally get the “What would Roger Bannister or Michael Jordan be like if they had today’s sports science or training techniques?”, but those almost always boil down to an answer along the lines of “they were great then, they would have been even greater in the modern game”.

With this as a backdrop a couple of things “all fell into place” for a bit of an out there idea that I want to see how it could go:

1. I continuously wonder about how much sport science and nutrition has improved the average athlete / person over time.
2. I moved to Australia and started to get into a bit of recreational swimming for fun and fitness
3. I got a fancy Garmin 910XT that does some tricky swimming calculations
4. I discovered the Wikipedia page on the World record progression 100 meters freestyle
5. I realised there are some clear technological advances (flip turns; shark suits; etc…) in the swimming realm
6. I wanted to have something interesting to track and use as sample data for little programs or data analytics
7. I enjoy finding out really detailed information about very specific items in history
8. I wanted to set a goal that was a bit out of reach (this one might be further than desired) to see what it would take to hit that goal

So with that idea I am setting forth to try and break the 100m freestyle world record set by Zoltán Halmay in Vienna in 1905 of 1:05.8.

I will post once a month with my progress as well as some details on training (what am I doing; how am I doing it) with the idea of only adding “technological advances” if I hit a wall / plateau in training (example: I currently don’t execute flip turns; but if I’m stuck on improvements I could learn).  When relevant I’ll include sections on either those training techniques; on some relevant data analysis items; or historical details on either Zoltán or swimming in general.

So without further ado my first status / progress detail

Chasing Zoltán Halmay (01 July 2018) Status Update
100m Freestyle Time	1:45.4
Weight	105.3kg (232lbs)
Training Distance (per week)	1200m
Total Strokes (100m)	47

Where to from here: well my plan is pretty simple: eat well; keep training in the pool with weekly trials on the 100m; drop some weight; increase capabilities; reduce time.