Reply To: U.S. Question, is interval for 50yd repeat length for 500 free too long?

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#2348
Gary P
Participant

I’m a 45 YO Master, self-coaching for the 500 free. I also found 50’s on 20 seconds rest wasn’t working for that event. I could do almost 30 @ 0:34 before a first fail, and once completed a set of 40 doing my last two together as a 100 @ 1:09. That would forecast to ~5:50 for a straight 500. Next workout I swam a 500 time trial and the best I could muster was a 6:10…and I was “cheating” with a repeating alarm on my watch that beeped & vibrated every 17.5 seconds to help with pacing.

After that experience, I switched to 75’s @ 0:52 and found that to be much more taxing. After 14 exposures to that set in 21 days, I’m still only able to make it to the low teens before first fail and low twenties before failing out of the set.

I occasionally go back to the 50’s @ :34 with 20 seconds rest as a second set, after the 75’s and a short recovery (300M + 5 min), and find it sufficiently challenging in that circumstance.

In my opinion, 50’s on :15 seconds rest is a reasonable alternative method to increase the work-load, especially given your time and logistical constraints.

I swim the 500 in a meet this coming weekend. We’ll see how I do. Given that I’m only getting to somewhere around 2x race distance before first fail and a little over 3 before failing the set, I think 5:50 is still a bit of a stretch. I do expect to break 6:00, though.