I've been swimming for Masters for 34 yrs (age 58 on 1/27/13) and like to swim 6 days/week, 4000 to 6000 yds/day, across most of the year, taking maybe 2 weeks off per year. Obviously, I tend to get tired over time. The key issue seems to be how tired is too tired??? I've read Maglischo's books ("Swimming Fast", "Swimming Faster") and he uses a % effort formulation based on HR and/or best time in an event. If you're doing repeats at say 30-50% slower than your best race time, is there value in that from the long term development perspective??? When I rest and taper for a meet or race, I seem to recover pretty well and I'm much closer to the national 55-59 records than I was in the 25-29 AG, so it seems like I must be doing something right, but wondered what long-time Masters swimmers thoughts are. Also, FWIW, I do most of my training on my own, but just race whoever happens to be in the pool.
