Any good resources or rules-of-thumb to predict race/meet times from training? Do you just use time trials, can you use your 100 base-times, descend sets or pace work? I'm curious as to where I am at early in this season and would like to compare/project that to a meet setting. I feel like once-upon-a-time I had a gestalt for judging practice performance that let me understand where my training was at.
Alternatively, does my question even make sense?
Your question makes good sense,unfortunately there are so many variables that it is hard to predict.Are you talking about a taper meet,what stroke,what distance etc.?What kind of workouts do you do? If you do pretty much aerobic work (longer distances,shorter rest) without a taper then you may not go much faster(the dive is worth about 2 sec if you are timing from a push off in work out.)Some people actually go slower at meets because for a variety of reasons,primarily performance anxiety.
If you do high intensity workouts and taper even a little you may go much faster. I do high intensity workouts and generally drop 8-10 sec in 200M breaststroke between mid-season meets and taper meet.
If those are high school or college times and you are just six weeks into getting back to swimming then you must be a new masters swimmer. Take those times and throw them away. You are starting fresh and need to establish new baselines. Just start swimming in meets to see where you are. For me, I can never come close to meet times at practice even though I think I am working very hard at practice. Must be something about preferring to swim in meets I guess. But that is just me. I have a lot of fun at meets. I have fun at practice too but, well, you know, its just practice. . . I can tell you that I have come to within 10% of my college days times in the shorter races but nowhere near those times in anything over a 400. I just do not have time to put in that much training. But I still have a lot of fun and get a lot of satisfaction from my swims as a master.
I've been doing a series of test sets over the last 2 years or so. While I can't create a formula from the times in the test set to predict the actual times in the meet, I can generally correlate performance so that, if my times on a test set in year 1 ahead of a meet are then similar to what I do on the same test set in year 2 ahead of the same meet, I expect and have seen my meet times to be about the same.
What I've found personally, though, is that my meet times as a Masters swimmer are WAY better than my training times. That is, when I was in HS & college I could come way closer to meet times in a workout. Now, that's a crap shoot. So, I don't try to extrapolate from an actual training time to a meet time, but I predict a meet time based upon my training times relative to a previous training time.
Ok... I think I'm more in the anaerobic/high intensity category. I'm most curious because I'm still in the steep part of the getting in shape curve (6 weeks in). I know in the past if I could go :58/:59 from a push in a SCY 100fr, then I was probably 54.5-55 ish for a meet. I'm not sure if that holds when you are older and swimming less yardage.
So here are my recent experiences. Trying to assess where I'm at for no other purpose than projecting where I might be at a big meet down the road. THat, and morbid curiosity.
LCM-50free, :33 a few times from a push at the end of a descend type set (long intervals)
SCY-100free 1:06 from a push over multiple repeats on a long interval. (This one seems really slow to me, which generated the question).
SCY-500free from a push 6:03, longer interval (7:30, last in the set of descending 500's)
200 free-haven't bothered to try a race-pace yet, but that would be my go-to event.
I have my best times as an age grouper, which I don't worry about, and then my masters best times. As you know, there are lots of different obstacles is our adult lives that make comparing these two measures less than apples to apples.
That being noted, Chris Stevenson has posted a really neat table regarding practice pace and race predictions. Check it out here. :bow:
Here are your meet times:
LCM-50free, :33 a few times from a push at the end of a descend type set (long intervals)
28.96
SCY-100free 1:06 from a push over multiple repeats on a long interval. (This one seems really slow to me, which generated the question).
57.64
SCY-500free from a push 6:03, longer interval (7:30, last in the set of descending 500's)
5:43.24
Ha. Not really what I was getting at....
I knew it was a hard question to explain. I was wondering how the lighter training volume impacts the ability to swim faster in meets than practice. I always felt that in the past, a high yardage training schedule negatively impacted the ability to swim faster in meets. For example. At the height of a high volume training season, a fast 100 in practice correlated directly to meet times, once the dive is added in. I'm wondering now with lower volume higher intensity training which way that will play out... Bigger or smaller practice to meet differences.
I have my best times as an age grouper, which I don't worry about, and then my masters best times. As you know, there are lots of different obstacles is our adult lives that make comparing these two measures less than apples to apples.
That being noted, Chris Stevenson has posted a really neat table regarding practice pace and race predictions. Check it out here. :bow:
This table is exactly what I am on the hunt for!!!
Ha. Not really what I was getting at....
Sorry - sometimes I just can't help myself. I think you will find that you swim surprisingly fast in your first meet.
I wish I could go back to college and swim with the sprinters. All of that yardage, I think, was a waste.
What I've found personally, though, is that my meet times as a Masters swimmer are WAY better than my training times. That is, when I was in HS & college I could come way closer to meet times in a workout.
This is true for me, too.
