Gary P
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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.
Well that’s kinda the crux of this thread; the relative difficulty of 50’s vs 75’s. Coming from the perspective of someone in the water, 40 50’s would be a helluva lot easier than 30, or even 25, 75s at the same pace.
I should add, that’s assuming they’re both on :20 rest. If the 50’s were on :15 rest? That sounds equally as difficult as the 75’s on :20 rest.
I think that race time predictions only become useful when you can actually train at the proposed 4-6x race distance without first fail. For a 500 that would mean you can hold close to 30×75 on target time. For 50’s at least 40x at target time.
Well that’s kinda the crux of this thread; the relative difficulty of 50’s vs 75’s. Coming from the perspective of someone in the water, 40 50’s would be a helluva lot easier than 30, or even 25, 75s at the same pace.
Thanks for the advice on pacing. The race didn’t really unfold for me the way I had envisioned it. I’ve gotta work on better throttle control out of the gate. That’s always been a challenge for me, be it swimming, running, or biking.
I did a little better job pacing my 200:
1 Patrick, Gary 45 IM-IL 2:18.00 2:08.72 20
29.61 1:02.23 (32.62) 1:35.56 (33.33) 2:08.72 (33.16)Do you compete with a tech suit?
No, just a lycra jammer. Thinking about a tech suit for Masters Nationals this summer. Not sure how much improvement to expect from that and a shave (I’m about a 5 out of 10 on the “Chewbacca scale”). 1/2 second a 50?
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.
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.
So I went back to training 50s instead of 75s for the last three days before the meet to allow myself a little rest. Made 30 @ :34 on :54 without a fail Thursday, barely broke a sweat making 20 on Friday, only did a dozen Saturday.
Here were my splits:
1 Patrick, Gary
30.72 1:04.45 (33.73) 1:39.06 (34.61) 2:14.14 (35.08)
2:49.81 (35.67) 3:26.22 (36.41) 4:02.88 (36.66) 4:40.05 (37.17)
5:17.59 (37.54) 5:54.01 (36.42)I just couldn’t hold that :35/50y pace. I went out a touch stronger than planned, and was a little fatigued from swimming what to me was a strong 200 free about 50 minutes prior, so maybe a 5:49.xx was in there.
Long story short: I’m convinced that, at least for me, 50’s on 20 seconds rest at 500 race pace is not demanding enough. My capacity to do 50’s on :20 rest suggests I should have been in the low-mid 5:40’s. But my work doing 75’s on :20 rest predicted almost exactly what time I finished at.
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.
I don’t see it as a softening at all. He still stands by the 15 & 20 second rest intervals as ideal. As always, he recognizes the difficulty of implementing this when the starting intervals are odd, especially in a group-training setting. This simply identifies various factors to consider when choosing which interval to use when the “ideal” interval is in the fringes between two logistically simple options.
You didn’t account for turns. Multiply your 25 times by 4, subtract two seconds for the block start, then add 3 seconds for 3 turns. 11.75 X 4 = 47, add 1 second (-2+3), 48.0 is the predicted 100 time.
Also, at over 18 seconds of rest per 25, you may need to see more like 20 reps to be confident that you’re athletes can hold that pace together for 100 straight.
BTW, the predicted time should be good now, not at the end of the season. What are these guys currently doing in the 100 at meets?
Another update. I started taking a magnesium supplement. Maybe that did it, or maybe my conditioning finally caught up to my ambition, but cramping issues aren’t really a problem anymore. Time permitting, I’m now able able to do two USRPT sets in a single practice.
As for my progress with USRPT…..I was quite demoralized and embarrassed to find out I was training in a 25 yard pool, not a 25 meter pool. God, what a dope! I should have known that even USPRT can’t turn a fat, out-of-shape old guy into a Masters Nationals Qualifier in just a couple months. I’m just now, 2 1/2 months later, getting to USRPT set paces that suggest I’m on the verge of posting NQT’s in a meet.
Because of the schedule of events at summer Nationals, I decided to drop training for the 200 free and pick up the 400/500 free.
My personal experience has been that USPRT sets of 50’s aren’t a good predictor of performance at that longer distance; I could complete a set of 40 50’s at :34 on a :54 interval, but couldn’t come close to holding that pace for a full 500 yards. I switched to 75’s and have found a much closer correlation to actual race (time trial, actually) pace.
Have my first meet since early October in a couple weeks. Will be swimming the 200, 500, and 50 free.
I’m finding 50’s on 20 seconds rest might bet too short a distance, or perhaps too much rest, for 400/500 training. I can do nearly thirty SCY 50’s at :34 on a :54 interval before a single fail, and made a full set of 40 the last time I attempted it. I can’t, however, come close to holding that pace in a straight 500. I’m splitting 38’s by the 250y mark, and end up swimming around a 6:10.
I’ve recently switched to doing 75’s at :52 on a 1:12 interval (essentially the same pace), and find that much more challenging. Like “first fail at 9, fail out at 15” challenging. On the 50’s, the first 25 after 20 seconds rest felt easy, and I only had to fight degradation of my stroke mechanics for the last 15 yards or so. That 2nd turn and third 25, with no extra rest at the end to recover, makes most of a 75 feel like I’d feel mid-race in a 500.
I’d counter that traditional training intensity is typically still pretty high, if not quite USRPT high. The question is: “What’s more likely to cause a repetitive motion injury: an 8,000 yard workout, 4-5,000 of which are at 90% of race pace effort, or a 4,000 yard workout, 2,000-2,500 of which are at 100% of race pace?” I’m inclined to believe the former.
I’m quite willing to change my mind if presented with data that shows USPRT trained athletes are experiencing training injuries at the same rate as traditionally trained athletes. As an unattached, self-coached Master, I’m experiencing USPRT in a one-man bubble (outside of the info I get on this forum). Have you had actual experience with a statistically significant number of USRPT swimmers that goes against Rushall’s assertion?
I tend to think of swim training injuries as almost exclusively repetitive motion injuries, not strain-related. I’ve never seen somebody “pull up” in a max effort 50 sprint like you often see a run sprinter do. That’s pretty strong evidence that the strain of swimming, even at maximum effort, is generally well below the threshold of causing injury.
Unless and until there’s evidence to the contrary, I’m inclined to believe Rushall’s assertion that lower volume = fewer injuries, even if that lower volume is at a higher intensity.Gary P: What kind of watch do you have?
I have a Speedo SD55137BX (http://www.amazon.com/Speedo-SD55137BX-Vibration-Alarm-Polyurethane/dp/B003J9Y4BU) It has an multi-segment interval timer with the option for audible alarm and/or vibration.
20 seconds rest is optimal for 50’s. I wouldn’t switch to a :50 interval until you’re getting 20+ @ :32 on :55.
I actually now use a watch with a programmable interval timer so that I can always set my rest interval at the optimal amount (15 sec for 25’s, 20 sec for 50’s and 75’s) without complicated pace-clock math, regardless of my target time.
