Swimming Technique October - December 2004 Feature Article

TRAINING LARSEN JENSEN
The Return of the Great American Miler
Larsen Jensen's American record, silver medal performance of 14:45.29 in the 1500 at Athens was the culmination of many months of careful planning and highly-focused training.
By Tito Morales

The expression on Grant Hackett's face after he touched the wall at the end of the 1500 meter freestyle final in Athens said it all.

Yes, there was the usual joy associated with winning an Olympic Games gold medal. Hackett's elation, however, looked to be very much tempered by feelings of relief, concern and an acute awareness of his own swimming mortality.

In a distance he has completely dominated for most of the past seven years, Hackett prevailed by less than two seconds over American Larsen Jensen and less than three over Great Britain's David Davies.

In 14 minutes and 45 seconds, the Hackett aura of invincibility had been pierced.

Jensen knew it. Davies knew it. And, most tellingly, Hackett, himself, knew it.

Setting the Target
What may have come as a surprise to many, Larsen Jensen's sterling 11-second improvement, was merely the culmination of many months of careful planning and highly-focused training.

In setting out a strategy for Athens at the beginning of the year, Jensen's coach, Bill Rose of the Mission Viejo Nadadores, analyzed data such as the swimmer's training background, improvement patterns and lifetime bests in order to determine what might be doable by Aug. 21, 2004.

"You have to take steps along the way," says Rose. "You have to consider the whole gamut. What is your experience? Where have you come over the last period of time?"

Big things had been expected of Jensen since 2002, when, as a 16-year-old, he banged out a 7:52.05 in the 800 meter freestyle. The new American record holder was not only anointed as the swimmer most likely to close the sizeable gap between the U.S. male distance corps and the rest of the world, but also as someone who might one day be mentioned in the same breath as the legendary Brian Goodell.

However, coming into this critical Olympic year, the sobering truth remained that Jensen's lifetime best of 15:00.81 in the 1500 was still nearly a pool length slower than Hackett's world record.

The question, then, was where exactly Rose and Jensen should set their sights.

"If we stepped him up to go 14:30 from 15 minutes, I felt that he may not be ready for the realism of that," explains Rose. "And if we tried to do something he really wasn't ready for physically, mentally and based on his experience level, it would have been very counterproductive."

After all the careful scrutiny and the intuition that comes with a coach's familiarity with his athlete, Rose and Jensen reached a consensus.

"The 14:45 was simply the time that we felt was achievable," says Rose. "It was absolutely something he could do."

Now the trick was to get Jensen enrolled in a course of action that would get him there.

A Detour in the Road
In January, though, just eight months before the Olympic Games, it not only seemed highly improbable that Jensen would do something special in Athens, but it also seemed downright impossible.

The normally brash Jensen had hit a colossal stumbling block, himself.

Everything up to that point had seemed to be rolling so smoothly. A few years earlier, the Bakersfield, Calif. native had moved down to Orange County in Southern California to train with the no-nonsense Nadadores. Then, in the tidiest of segues, he was heading over to the University of Southern California as a 17-year-old freshman to train alongside veteran star Erik Vendt under coaching legend Mark Schubert. After all, it was Schubert who had groomed Goodell.

Mission Viejo, Goodell, Schubert, USC, Vendt, it all seemed so picture perfect that some openly wondered if either Vendt or Jensen might just nab the $1 million incentive bonus USA Swimming had offered for any American swimmer who won a gold medal and broke the world record in the 1500 in Greece.

After just three months at USC, though, Jensen returned to Orange County, confused, distraught and completely out of sorts.

"My head wasn't in the right place," admits Jensen. "It was just really hard for me to juggle my first semester of college life and try to do the extreme workload that I also had to do in the pool."

Blame Jensen's hasty departure on his youth, inexperience, unfamiliarity or any number of other factors, but credit him with recognizing and quickly admitting that he'd made a huge mistake.

College could wait. He had to get back to a place where he felt comfortable enough to focus entirely on what he knew he needed to do to reach Athens.

"He came back here really teetering in his own self-confidence," says Rose. "He was not the same swimmer as he had been when he left."

A few weeks after his return to the Nadadores, Jensen competed at a "Q" Invitational meet in Pasadena. Life had gotten so skewed for Jensen, though, that the best he could manage in the 800 was 8:27.52. He lost the race by over 15 seconds.

When Rose, who was at a Grand Prix meet in Minnesota with another of his top distance stars, Justin Mortimer, heard about Jensen's performance, he was positively livid.

Getting Back on Track
"There was a concern as to whether he was going to be able to pop back into mentally and physically being able to train properly," says Rose.

Rose had scheduled an intensive 10-day training camp with Mortimer at the University of Minnesota. He suggested quite firmly that it would behoove Jensen to purchase a plane ticket so that he could take part. Jensen agreed.

"That turned out to be a major, major decision," says Rose. "Because once he got there, it was just him and Justin, and they trained their guts out the next 10 days."

Rose could tell right away that Jensen's poor swimming was not fitness-related, it was purely psychological. And he credits Mortimer with really helping to get the swimmer back on track.

"It was just head-to-head," explains Rose. "In the beginning, Justin was doing what he was doing, which was very good, and Larsen was hooking on and saving face along the way. Each day, though, each guy would challenge the other one a little bit more. Within two or three days, they were both doing really good stuff."

The competition grew so highly-charged that the entire Golden Gopher swim team would oftentimes congregate in the natatorium just to watch Jensen and Mortimer go at it.

The results of the training camp, and Jensen's successful rejuvenation there, were immediate.

On Feb. 10, just three weeks after his dismal performance in Pasadena, Jensen traveled to the ConocoPhillips Spring National Championships and won the 800 in 7:53.29; four days later he placed second in the 1500 in 15:08.84.

"The comparison to less than a month earlier was simply awesome," says Rose. "We knew that he had turned a corner as far as his attitude and his belief in himself. The rest of it was getting down to setting goals and following them the rest of the year."

Late to Bloom, Early to Rise
Jensen didn't get his start in competitive swimming until late. He was already 13 before he began to swim full time. While his late start may have been a handicap for gaining technical mastery over each of the four strokes, it was a blessing in disguise in the sense that his motivation in making up for lost time was "through the roof."

From a technical standpoint, too, Rose is convinced that Jensen's late start was actually beneficial for his swimming the distance freestyle.

"He learned to swim with a six-beat kick," Rose explains. "Most of our swimmers who start really early learn with a six-beat kick, but then, when they start doing a lot of laps, they go into a kind of survival situation where they'll develop a two-beat or crossover kick so that they won't get so tired."

Since Jensen came into the game so late, though, he never really had time to develop such habits.

"Fortunately, by the time he figured out that there was something else he could do," Rose says, "it wasn't comfortable for him to do anything else but a six-beat kick; it had already been ingrained in his neurology, so to speak."

Rose points out that since Jensen's stroke was so sound when he joined Mission Viejo, a tribute to former Bakersfield Swim Club coach Jim Richey, his focus has been merely to try to enhance the swimmer's existing technique.

"A lot of our workouts involve drills," says Rose. "The technique work he does is preparation for his sets, and a lot of them are things that promote as much balance in the water as possible."

What works for Jensen, though, Rose says, may not be ideal for a Justin Mortimer or Chad Carvin.

"You have to look at the individual," he explains. "We all have different bodies. We all look different, walk different, and so on. It's the coach's job to say what is best suited for a particular swimmer."

Much of what Rose has been working on with Jensen is trying to improve his speed.

"He's probably the slowest 3:46 you've ever seen," the coach laughs, referring to Jensen's notoriously slow turnover in shorter distances. "We were able to get his 200 down from a 1:56 to a 1:50.6 over the last year-and-a-half....He will get stronger as he goes, and the stronger he gets, the faster he'll get. Most swimmers who are really fast are in their mid-20s, so that bodes well down the road." (Jensen just turned 19 on Sept. 1.)

Implementing the Plan
Once Rose and Jensen agreed upon the ideal target, they dissected the perfect goal race into various segments, not just into 500s, but also into 100s. They would leave nothing to chance. The truth would be in the numbers.

They backtracked from Aug. 21 to devise a training schedule that would get Jensen there with various key stages along the way.

"Goal-setting is so important," says Rose. "Everything we did was set up for the 14:45. All of our splits, all of our training sets....When we did certain kinds of pacing work, it was all set up based on what needed to be done to do a 14:45."

Perhaps even more importantly, once Jensen set his sights on a 14:45 in Athens, and he knew that he possessed the talent to achieve it, he set about affixing the time deep into his psyche.

Jensen immersed himself in his goal time. He posted it on notes throughout his apartment, on the bathroom mirror, the television screen, the wall of his bedroom....

Rose even had Jensen memorialize all of his perfect race splits on his kickboard in indelible ink.

"We trained with the idea in mind that that was going to be the time he was going to do," says Rose.

All along the way, there were clear indications that the plan was going according to schedule.

Jensen, for instance, swam extremely well at a two-week spring training camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.

"I was basically doing the same stuff at altitude that I was doing at sea level," Jensen says. "And I was really confident with that."

A short time later, at the TYR Swim Meet of Champions at Mission Viejo in late May, Jensen ripped off a 15:05.03 while still in the middle of heavy training.

"I don't know too many guys who can do that in a season," says Jensen. "That was a huge boost of confidence for me."

At the U.S. Olympic Trials, a racing-heavy competition that was designed to get him into the pool in Athens to give him the chance to swim his 14:45, he swam a 14:56.71, a four-second improvement of his lifetime best and a time just under Chris Thompson's 14:56.81 from 2000 for a new American record.

The Cult of the Distance Swimmer
Distance swimming is as grueling on the mind as it is on the body.

It is a discipline in which the meek need not apply. For athletes such as Jensen, no amount of pain is painful enough. Less is never more. And more can always be improved upon the next time around.

The Larsen Jensens of the swimming world take pride in being in the outside lane. They take pleasure in seeing how much discomfort their bodies can tolerate. They need to know that in a pool full of swimmers, they're the ones who are working the hardest, every practice, every day.

"When people watch my workout, I want them to say, `This guy's crazy,' confesses Jensen. "I don't ever want to have a bad workout. I want people calling their family and friends and telling them, `Do you know what Larsen did at practice today?!?'"

Word spreads quickly in the cult of the distance swimmer, from generation to generation, from continent to continent. Mike Bruner did this. Brian Goodell and Kieren Perkins did this. Grant Hackett does this.Some of the accounts are whispered in near reverential tones.

Jensen's average heavy training week leading up to Athens was 90,000 meters. Oftentimes, though, his totals would cross over into six-digit territory.

"Putting your mind and body through hell is not easy," Jensen admits. "You have days where you want to quit. You have days where you're feeling on top of the world. There are ups and downs almost daily or weekly; it changes that quickly. You just have to keep working through it."

Taking Care of Business
At the height of his training, Jensen's week was broken down into 11 water sessions, including doubles on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and singles on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.

There was some weight training incorporated into the schedule, but the emphasis each week was on swimming, swimming and more swimming.

"Everything we did, except for Sunday, would be between 8-10,000," says Rose. "It would vary according to the emphasis and stress level we would use."

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were pressure set days, days where Rose expected good times with either short or long rest intervals.

A typical set might include 15 x 100s on the 1:15 holding about 1:02s, immediately followed by 10 x 100s on the 1:10 holding 1:00s, then topped off by 5 x 100s on the 1:05 holding 58s. As the season progressed, and Jensen's fitness level improved still more, the sets were adjusted even further.

"At the end of the year," Rose says, "we got to the point where he could hold 5 x 100s on the 1:00."

Rose sometimes monitors his athletes' efforts by having them take their heart rates during or immediately after a particular set. It's all performed manually, with no gadgets.

"It's done to know what kind of pressure we're putting on," Rose explains. "On certain days, I want them to keep their heart rate under a certain level."

Twenty to 30 percent of a given workout is kicking-oriented. Pulling sets involve pullbuoys and bands, but Rose insists that he's not a huge fan of pulling drills because they tend to create good pullers and not necessarily good swimmers.

Month after month, Jensen kept raising the bar on his training sets, 80 percent of which were set up for negative-splitting or descending.

He knew he was on the verge of doing great things in Athens when, on the first day of the U.S. Olympic team's training camp in Stanford, he kicked a 400 meter freestyle in 4:58. That evening, he and Vendt knocked out a challenging set of 10 x 400s on descending intervals. Jensen produced a sizzling 3:55 on his final effort.

And, still later in the camp, during a descending-to-best effort set of 400s, 300s and 150s, Jensen recorded the mind-numbing times of 3:49 on his last 400, 2:53 on his last 300, and 1:24 and 1:23 on his last two 150s, all from a push.

"That was probably the best set I've ever done," concedes Jensen. "Even though it was a shorter set, it was definitely the most quality set I've ever done."

The Execution
"The last thing I said to him going in was, `You've gotta realize that Hackett is not necessarily swimming at his best,'" recalls Rose. "`He may very well be in the 40s somewhere, and if you're at 14:45, why couldn't you be in the ballgame with him?'"

With that in mind, Jensen dove into the Athens pool to fulfill his destiny.

"The most amazing thing in the entire world was that there was not a 100 split that he did at the Olympic Games that was more than a tenth of a second off the splits we had on his kickboard," says Rose. "In 30+ years of coaching, I've never seen this happen before. He was supposed to go out in a 57.2, and he went out in a 57.2. He was supposed to come home in a 57.7, and he came home in a 57.7. He was supposed to be 3:56 at the 400, and he was 3:56."

Hackett had surged to his usual early lead, and at the 200 meter mark, he was already over three seconds ahead of Jensen.

By the halfway point, though, Hackett had only managed to extend his advantage over Jensen by a few more tenths. Both swimmers were clicking off 100 splits in the mid-59-second range. So, too, was Davies, who was virtually dead even with Jensen when his feet hit the wall in 7:24.75.

As Rose watched, Jensen continued to execute their plan to perfection.

"It was almost eerie," says Rose. "When he went into the 58s at approximately the 1000 mark, that was exactly when he was supposed to do that."

Hackett started to come back to Jensen.

"It was a very, very fun race," says Jensen. "It's not too often when you have three to four guys together in a mile, not to mention all of them going so far under 15 minutes."

Layer by layer, Jensen and Davies began to peel away Hackett's invincibility.

No one in recent memory had ever gained on Hackett quite like this. It wasn't so much that Hackett was completely falling apart; it was that Jensen and Davies were growing stronger with each length of the pool.

At the 1200 mark, the three swimmers were separated by less than two seconds. The Olympic Games had not seen such a battle at this distance since 1976, when Americans Goodell and Bobby Hackett (no relation to Grant) dueled Australian Stephen Holland.

"Seeing the world record holder and Olympic champion right there with 300 to go, it's everything you could ever ask for," says Jensen. "It's an opportunity you don't get every day."

And it was a position no American male miler had been in during a fully-attended Olympic Games in decades.

While Jensen produced a sterling negative-split swim (7:24.77-7:20.52 for a 14:45.29), Hackett, who was fighting to hold his pace, still had just enough left to prevail in 14:43.40. Davies was third at 14:45.95.

"I was exhausted, definitely," admits Jensen. "But looking up and seeing the time I wrote down on my wall and in so many places, it made all the pain just dissolve away. It was a very special feeling."

The Journey Continues
For Jensen, who is back at USC this fall, another year wiser, another year stronger and another huge accomplishment more confident, the journey continues.

"Now I'm more focused than ever," he says. "I really want to get in and start training hard. I want to win more than ever now."

Jensen is excited about having been part of one of the most competitive 1500 meter swims in history, and he's eager to face off against the likes of Hackett and fellow distance youngsters Davies and Yuri Prilukov for many years to come.

"I hope that with my race, a younger generation of American distance swimmers will come up through the ranks and realize that there's a lot of respect that goes with working hard," says Jensen.

As for USA Swimming's Million Dollar Distance Challenge, which was created to foster more attention and enthusiasm to U.S. distance swimming, Jensen insists that the entire concept never factored into his approach leading up to Athens.

"I swim because I want to swim and I like to swim," says Jensen. "I don't swim for money. Obviously, it's nice to have my school paid for, but I do it first and foremost because I love it and enjoy it. I enjoy the pride associated with it, and especially with representing your country at the highest level of sport."

Truth be told, Jensen's performance in Athens probably bolstered the future of American distance swimming much more than any seven-figure monetary challenge.

"Larsen going a 14:45 had a lot of other ramifications," says Rose. "Finally, in America, there's somebody who can do that kind of thing. Someone else is going to say, `Wait a minute, I can do that. How can I do that?' And it'll spread out, how we did it will spread."

As Jensen continues to set his sights even higher, both his future, and the future of U.S. distance swimming in general, continues to unfurl like a beautiful tapestry.

"We wanted to put him in the position where he's in right now," says Rose. "And the next step is to break the world record. It's believable now. The bottom line is you've truly got to be able to believe that you can do it, and that's where he is now."

"I'd be honored if I was the one who people would say, `Yeah, American distance swimming turned around with Larsen,'" says Jensen. "That's how Brian Goodell did it. Everyone wanted to be like Brian Goodell. I think it'd be an extreme honor for a younger generation of people to say, `I want to be like Larsen.' That'd be a great, great thing."

Tito Morales, a novelist and free-lance writer, is a Masters swimmer who competed collegiately for the University of California at Berkeley.