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

[Gary P]

I use a watch with a repeating interval timer and a combination audible/vibrating alarm, so I’m pretty confident that my practice times are accurate.

My assumption is that since I can pull down 30 50’s without a fail at :34, I could probably get far enough into a set at :33 to predict a 5:40. Since I wasn’t seeing the correlation to 500 time trial results with 50’s, however, I chose to advance to 75’s instead so I really don’t know how many I could do at :33.

Any advice as to optimal splitting would be appreciated. My aim was to go out :32, and hold 0:35’s to the end. I obviously overswam the first two 50s and paid for it later. But was the original strategy sound? This was my first real race 500 in 27 years.