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!
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!
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!
