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As others have mentioned, when going from 50’s to 25’s you have to account for the turn. If you’re doing 50’s at 27.8, that’s not two 25’s at 13.9, it’s two 25’s at ~13.3 plus a turn at ~1.2.
I’ve never tried 25’s at 200 pace because the opening 25 of a 50 at 200 pace always felt relatively easy; it only really started to hurt after the flip turn. Also, I think you’d have to do so many to be relevant to a 200 race (50-60 offered, needing to make at least 40) that it didn’t seem very time efficient.
I’ve actually made the most progress on my 200 race time when I was doing mostly 75’s in workouts. Here’s where you’re “wasted time” thought comes in. A set of 60 25’s and a set of 20 75’s is the same distance, but you can get the 75’s done in 8-10 minutes less time. And frankly, you’re likely to fail out of the 75’s sooner so you’ll achieve the desired physiological training effect much sooner. I think you spend an awful lot of the time early in the set of 25’s at 200 pace cruising, waiting for the set to actually start feel demanding. The only upside is you’ll get more reps and perhaps develop more “muscle memory,” but I’m not sure that muscle memory developed in a low-demand situation really transfers all that well to a high-fatigued state.
