Reply To: Correlations to race speed vs. practice times
Rick,
Working at goal speed as a target time is rough. I got cute (and all full of myself) about 8 years ago and tried that with my kids and had pretty much the same results, they could make very few of them, yes they did improve. But man was it a rocky road and made me nervous too.
400/500 guys. The idea of 50 front 1/2 isn’t bad. Then maybe combine them with 75 and 100s at back half pace, example: 6 x 50 at pace on :50/1:00, 2 x 75 at pace on 1:30/1:40, 1 x 100 on 1:40/1:50 (just guessing pace will determine interval) at pace and do them as rounds maybe 3-4 rounds with :30 rest between rounds. You would be looking at 3x as 1650 to 4x as 2200 tvw at 400/500 pace, not an easy set. you might do the first two rounds as above and maybe drop the 100s on the 3rd round and the 75s on the 4th or reverse it and go the other way and add the 75s and 100s You just have to read the kids and present the challenge. The key is holding “race pace”
With your breaststrokers try using the average of 2, 3, & 4 of their current best time and see if that makes a difference. The 2:16 is probably out in 31 mid and then holds in the 34 mid to high range? So we’d use 34.81 to 35.51 (.69+) for HS swimmers is about average, as the target times. Basically what you are doing with the 35.5 as a “no slower than time”. Also any time you adjust speed they will regress a little i.e. if they could make say 8-10 total at 36s, then you move them to 35s, they may fall back to in the neighborhood of 5-7, which is ok.
Don’t apologize for your group size. It’s what you have and what you are seeing with that group. At least you are pay attention and starting to use the data to try and make your swimmers better. It’s a start and can be a very interesting journey.
Just my thoughts
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