Speed in practice

There are a number of reasons for having the race pace incorperated in your training sets: - it stresses other energy systems in your body. The ones that you don't need with swimming long distances on 70% - you can learn how to split correct, for instance on a 100 meter. Otherwise the race its self is the only possibility to learn it - frontal drag increases dramatically when speed is higher. You need to learn to deal with that drag. - it is a good copy of the race - it gives you the possibility to learn to maintain good technique under stress You don't need to do race pace every set or even every workout,but I think it should be the central theme to the majority of workouts in the main part of your training cycle.Unless you are a sprinter,race pace doesn't mean AFAP,it means the speed you want to swim the race.Good sets to do this are either broken swims or 1/2 the distance swims (a set of 50s at 100 pace etc.) Excellent posts. Sometimes people distinguish between race pace and race intensity. For example, if I lift before a swim practice I might be too fatigued to hit my goal race paces but I might still be able to put together a high level of intensity. This would have some value from a physiological training standpoint but you would lose some value based on items mentioned in Why Not's post (eg technique at high speed, pacing). Race intensity is fine but it is not a complete replacement. Plus if you are routinely too fatigued to hit race pace I think you are not training right.

There are a number of reasons for having the race pace incorperated in your training sets: - it stresses other energy systems in your body. The ones that you don't need with swimming long distances on 70% - you can learn how to split correct, for instance on a 100 meter. Otherwise the race its self is the only possibility to learn it - frontal drag increases dramatically when speed is higher. You need to learn to deal with that drag. - it is a good copy of the race - it gives you the possibility to learn to maintain good technique under stress You don't need to do race pace every set or even every workout,but I think it should be the central theme to the majority of workouts in the main part of your training cycle.Unless you are a sprinter,race pace doesn't mean AFAP,it means the speed you want to swim the race.Good sets to do this are either broken swims or 1/2 the distance swims (a set of 50s at 100 pace etc.) Excellent posts. Sometimes people distinguish between race pace and race intensity. For example, if I lift before a swim practice I might be too fatigued to hit my goal race paces but I might still be able to put together a high level of intensity. This would have some value from a physiological training standpoint but you would lose some value based on items mentioned in Why Not's post (eg technique at high speed, pacing). Race intensity is fine but it is not a complete replacement. Plus if you are routinely too fatigued to hit race pace I think you are not training right.