I wonder if anyone can help me. Thank you in advance!
My goal is to improve my 400 meter freestyle. My time right now is 5:45. I am almost 44 years old.
Coming off six weeks of doing only long, slow swims (2-3 miles) at 125 HR or lower, I performed a 3000 meter freestyle at maximum in an effort to discover my lactate threshold. My time was 47:29.
Right afterwards my HR was 164, so I estimate it was probably around 170 during the actual swim. Average pace was as follows:
1:35 per 100
3:10 per 200
6:20 per 400
My first 400 was, to my surprise, a 6:02. So you can see I got slower later on.
Is this a reasonable approximation if my lactate threshold?
Should I start by training below this pace, say at 140 HR, then build to eventually holding 400 meter pace?
Thank you for any advice you care to give. God bless!
Yesterday I intended to swim 2 miles at 140 HR. My plan is to start slow and move up the HR “ladder” a bit at a time.
Unfortunately my HR was 152, 152, 148, and 144 the times I checked it (finger to neck, floating in the middle of the pool). I suppose I need to slow down! Not easy though. 125 HR I can do; 170 HR I can do. Hard to find the in-between.
If anyone disagrees with this approach I’d love to hear it. Thank you!
Thank you very much. I will watch that video closely and get back with questions. You make a good point - the 400 is a fast event and I should add in race pace training
Yesterday I intended to swim 2 miles at 140 HR. My plan is to start slow and move up the HR “ladder” a bit at a time.
Unfortunately my HR was 152, 152, 148, and 144 the times I checked it (finger to neck, floating in the middle of the pool). I suppose I need to slow down! Not easy though. 125 HR I can do; 170 HR I can do. Hard to find the in-between.
If anyone disagrees with this approach I’d love to hear it. Thank you!
I think that if you were training for an open water event then the above approach sounds good. The 400 is a different animal altogether and may require a more distance specific practice - rather than a full 2 miles straight - which is basically what your body is adapting to.
The ideal way to train is to explore your comfort zone and find what gear it requires to swim fast (but controlled) over a certain distance. By getting a feel for the tempo - whether it be a 50 or a 200 - you will know instinctively how to pace without implementing the wrong gear.
That said, if your target race is the 400 - then swim 400's - both straight - and in a broken set, to learn what the tempo per 100 should feel like - This may help you discover how to swim this distance without using too heavy a stroke, so that you don't hit the wall (your lactate threshold) before the 400 is up.
This coach has a good approach which you might find helpful. www.youtube.com/watch
I have always liked using one of the Dave Salo test sets (borrowed by way of @pwb) for approximating a threshold:
3x300 @ :45-1:00 rest. All fast, ideally aiming for same splits per 100, same stroke count/25 (or 50 if doing LCM), same kicks off each wall, etc.
Take the three times, add together and divide by 9 to get your threshold time, then round up 5 to get a good idea of your threshold base (that interval you can make for X reps where you are working quite hard but still make the interval).
It’s a little math heavy, but personally it always worked for giving me an approximation of my aerobic threshold!
Mike,
A word of encouragement. Your lactate threshhold is not a static point. The more you train at a higher heart rate, the higher your lactate threshold will become. When I was your age, my goal was to keep my heart rate at least 160 for the majority of my practice 5,000/day. You can do this by keeping a rest interval of 15-20 sec between repeats. You will also want to add 100% effort swims on a much longer interval - a couple of times per week (50s, 100s, broken 200s).
Keep in mind that muscle memory is heart rate and effort dependent. Long slow swims (125 hr) yield a different muscle memory than training at 160+. For your goal in either the 400 or the 2 mile swim, you need to practice at your race pace goal.
Too many masters swimmers believe that you get better by swimming on a shorter rest interval. try 20-30 sec rest intervals and bump the intensity up as high as you can tolerate. Your body will adapt and you will get better.
Good Luck.
Paul
Paul - thank you very much for that info and encouragement. Whew, there is no way I could keep my HR at 160 day after day, I would badly overtrain, not that gifted. However I can definitely work in a lot of race pace training this summer, holding 100s at 1:25 or so, and even longer distances.
Mikeh,
I am with you. Have always hated 3,000 for time because it has more to do with your mental state than physical. Never found they reflected what I could do in a race or in practice when given a little rest.
Don't sell yourself short about how long you can hold a heart rate. Time and training and pluggin away can make it happen.
Skeletal muscles undergo all kinds of adaptations from athletic training. One of the most important of these is increasing the number of mitochondria within each muscle cell. Mitochondria are the so-called "power houses" where oxygen and fuel are processed to fuel our swimming or other athletic pursuit.
Long hard distance training can help increase mitochondria, but researchers have recently learned that much shorter, extremely intense bursts of activity can accomplish the same thing. Check out this video of a "Wingate sprint":
www.youtube.com/watch
Well last weekend I swam the best 400 meters of my life. That isn’t saying much, but it was 5 seconds faster than last year. The only 400 pace work I have done since April, I did during warmup for this race. All my training has been very slow (HR 112-128) or moderate (HR 148-152).
The lack of race prep showed in this one respect - my fastest 100m was my fastest 100 by 6 seconds. Clearly I should have gone out faster.
This race was much easier than last summer’s slower race. I felt like I had a lot more energy, bought I was too old to feel that way.
Got another race next month, God willing I’ll go faster!
