How Do I Pace the 50 free?

Hello Swim friends! Back in 2007 Ande posted the below Swimming Tip to his blog. It concerns split differentials in the 50 yard freestyle. As you can see, among top swimmers, the first 25 yards is roughly .5 faster than the second 25. Remove the dive, and in many cases the second 25 is probably faster than the first among the elite swimmers My 50 yard free is far more lop sided - usually the first 25 is roughly 1.5 seconds faster than the first. It never really occurred to me that I was doing something wrong. I'd like to access your wisdom...how do you swim the 50? Are the first 4-5 strokes sub-maximal, and then all out the rest of the way? Thank you for your help, and thank you to Ande for his challenging posts! Ande's Swimming Tips: Swim Faster Faster Tip 172 Split Differentials for the 50 Free Short Course I've written about the importance of correct splitting in other swim faster faster tips, but let's drill down and take a close look at how to correctly split the short course 50 free. Study the 50 free split differentials of each swimmer You calculate split differentials by subtracting a swimmers 2nd 25 time from his first 25 time 2nd 25 time - 1st 25 time = split differential Here are the final results for the 50 free finals in the 2007 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming & Diving Championships 1 Joyce, Kara Lynn 21.71 10.63 11.08 diff = 0.45 2 Jackson, Lara 21.73 10.64 11.09 diff = 0.45 3 Nymeyer, Lacey 21.80 10.62 11.18 diff = 0.56 4 Silver, Emily 21.99 10.82 11.17 diff = 0.35 5 Bishop, Brooke 22.17 10.85 11.32 diff = 0.47 5 Aljand, Triin 22.17 10.90 11.27 diff = 0.47 7 Bradford, Jenny 22.23 10.60 11.63 diff = 1.03 8 Denby, Kara 22.41 10.79 11.62 diff = 0.83 Here are the final results for the 50 free finals in the 2007 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming & Diving Championships Event 4 Men 50 Yard Freestyle 1 Cielo, Cesar 18.69 9.14 9.55 diff = 0.41 2 Targett, Matt 19.08 9.29 9.79 diff = 0.50 2 Wildman-Tobriner, Ben 19.08 9.39 9.69 diff = 0.30 2 Subirats, Albert 19.08 9.30 9.78 diff = 0.48 5 Goodrich, Scott 19.29 9.35 9.94 diff = 0.59 6 Weber-Gale, Garrett 19.33 9.49 9.84 diff = 0.35 7 Tsagkarakis, Apostol 19.48 9.32 10.16 diff = 0.84 8 Lundquist, Bryan 19.49 9.54 9.95 diff = 0.41 Ideal Split Differential It looks like around 0.30 - 0.40 of is the ideal split differential for the short course 50 free. Swimmers should target their 50 free splits in the a range of 0.25 - 0.60. If a swimmer has a differential of 0.60 or more, she probably worked her first 25 a bit too hard or maybe had a bad turn or push off. Sadly enough, even in a 50, you may not swim your fastest time by going all out from the get go, you need to be swimming close to all out, hit a great turn, have an excellent streamline breakout When Fred Bousquets went 18.74 His splits were 9.26 9.48 so his differential was only 0.22! When Cesar Cielo went 18.69 his splits were 9.14 9.55 so his differential was 0.41. One excellent swimmer told me that when he races the 50 free the first 2 strokes in his breakout are at about 80% effort, since he's already going fast from his dive.