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?
I'd just like to add a consoling note to this discussion. My friend Glenn Battle, an excellent masters swimmer with a number of All American rankings, told me once that practice times don't have much relevance to meet performance.
He was assuming, I am pretty sure, that you work out reasonably hard at practice and attend regularly. But if you happen to swim slow at any given practice, and you have a meet coming up soon, you shouldn't assume the poor performance during practice portends a lousy time at the meet.
Case in point: Last week, after doing various sets, we did one fast 100 at the end of practice. I was a little tired, but not super tired, and expected to go about :59 or so, which is what I usually do under such circumstances. I think I came in at 1:01. It was in a 25 yard pool, and it was from a pushoff. Even worse was how tired I felt at the end of it. I told my coach, Bill White, that there is no way I should feel that bad swimming that slow.
What really bugged me was knowing that in four days, I would be racing the 100 m Long Course freestyle at a last chance LCM meet. If I could barely make a 1:01 in short course yards, how could I hope to make a 1:01 something in long course meters?
But I remembered what Glenn told me and tried not to psych myself out.
At the meet, I did a 1:01.43.
Everyone is, of course, different. Some swimmers are great practice swimmers and don't improve that much at meets. I may be one of those guys who can gear up for pain but only for a limited time! I try to endure what I can in practice, but at meets, knowing most events are over relatively quickly (as opposed to practice, which lasts at least an hour!), I just seem to be able to buck up and suffer more intensely, knowing it will be over soon.
Anyhow, I suspect you will do much better in meets than practice. Let us know if the Glenn Battle wisdom applies to your situation as it has consistently applied to mine.
Good luck!
PS by suffering more intensely, I absolutely 100 percent do not mean to suggest going all out on any race 100 or longer and dying long before you manage to touch the final wall. Suffer, yes, but suffer wisely! Keep in mind that adrenaline alone will mask some of the pain early on, and you might be tricked into premature death by its apparent absence! (But I felt so good before the piano dropped on me--so smooth and strong and then...)
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?
The ratio or difference for Meet times vs practice times varies from one swimmer to the next., swimmers can have different ratios for different strokes. I tend to swim pretty fast in practice and a bit faster in meets. Some swimmers swim way faster in meets Than they do in practice, I've also seen swimmers swim faster in practice than in meets.
My prediction on this one is that practice & meet times will be similar. I think that my workload is less (swimming 3-4 x week) than in the past and so it seems like I'd be able to swim faster at any given moment. So my guess is that the race/competition factor as well as any potential taper may not provide as much cushion as I'm used to.
Basing this on recently easily holding :28 on a few 50's, which seems faster than I would expect. I'm guessing with less training, less feeling of competition at meets and no chance to work starts/turns that meet times will be only slightly faster.
It really is fascinating-makes me wonder if my years of just putting in crazy yardage were really not working "smart."
My experience is that I swim slower in practice than I used to, but my meet times are not that far behind my PBs, the times I did at 18-19 years of age. I cannot really explain this. Maybe I'm training smarter now, but then my training times shouldn't be that far behind.
But I wouldn't guess a meet time from swimming the same event in practice. If I want a stipulation on say, a 100 free, I'd swim a 50 in practice. The time will be roughly the same as the second 50 of a 100. A 200 free in practice can give me an estimate of what I can expect in the 800.
Also, like several people have said, it differs from swimmer to swimmer, from season to season, from event to event. Still, you'll probably go faster in the meet than from a push-off in practice. In a 100, perhaps 1.0-2.0 seconds from the dive and the same just because it's a meet.
