Reply To: 50's at 100 pace
I can relate to the frustration you’re feeling, but I suggest you try a couple of things before deciding 500s at 100 pace isn’t workable.
First, add a bit more wiggle room into your target time. You have clearly thought a lot about how to calculate an appropriate target time. Turns offer 4 major points to easily lose/gain a couple of tenths. Unless/until you’re convinced your entire wall sequence (approach, turn, plant, push, breakout) is super consistent and is not, in fact, the major reason your time tanks I say give yourself a little more room in your target. If your walls are super consistent then tighten the time up. Walls are almost always where I see time lost in race pace sets with 50/75/100s. Walls are wildly important in short course racing. Variability on the walls really messes with the effectiveness of race pace sets.
Second, failure on rep 3 isn’t good, but if you rested a rep and blah blah blah collected two more good reps before three total fails that would be 4 good reps or twice your race distance. Not awesome, but not a terrible starting point for what is arguably a very tough set. If you did that set 10 times over the next, say, 5 weeks could you get up to 8-10 good reps? I would expect my swimmers to progress at that rate (with all the caveats for how many times you’re training, etc.).
If you were on my team I’d say we shouldn’t be happy with how you did, but certainly not upset. It’s a starting point. Deconstruct it, get super-consistent on the walls, do the set again and again and again and see how it progresses.
