What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

__steve__ — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 22:02:07 GMT

Exactly 😂
Good you have the dysauto under control now 😉

That last 15m lasted about 30 seconds and the only thing that kept me from drowning was the split request

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Elaine Krugman — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:45:57 GMT

Oh man, it hurts to reading that! I know exactly what you went through, because that happened to me on a 100 breaststroke race. I hadn't yet been diagnosed with dysautonomia, so I didn't understand what was happening. Adrenaline had over-flooded my system, and I lost muscle control like you did. My body locked up on me about 10 yards before finishing. Those were the hardest last 10 yards I have ever swum.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

__steve__ — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 20:36:56 GMT

The toughest swim, which almost did me in, was a 50M fr split request in a 200M fr event. The 50 went very good, taking maybe 2 breaths, however I had to legally finish the rest of the swim to get credit. I was ok at 100 but wasn’t recovering and started gasping. The seed time I thought was plenty slow enough (20 seconds slower than actual time) but I was the only one still swimming at 175M. I rolled on my back at that point with feet sinking and loosing muscle control. It was a mental pursuit to avoid grabbing the lane line. Finally finished with everyone waiting.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Kyle Deery — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 19:15:38 GMT

This is fantastic and terrible at the same time!

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Muppet — Mon, 09 May 2022 19:46:59 GMT

BASEBALL!

One of our old coaches was a big baseball fan, and he was amped up about the Dodgers or something, so he designed this sprint/quality set he called Baseball. We were going to race 3 swims (an inning) up to 3 times (3 strikes). Taking our best times, he figured out some target time he wanted us to hit. We'd get up and race, and then he'd calculate how far off we were (cause we were typically not swimming as ambitious as his target) WITHOUT telling us our goal time, and then we'd have two more tries to get it (and if you hit your target, you didn't need to swim for all 3 strikes, so we could swim as few as 3x or as many as 9x).

Considering I had to start with 100y fly and struck out, my subsequent at-bats were an uphill battle, though I think he gave everyone 50s for the 3rd at-bat. I may have been graced with a sacrifice bunt after coming within a couple tenths on my 9th swim or something like that.

I think most of our team will tell you we haven't done anything that hard in years prior or since. I don't remember exactly what I was swimming time-wise for those 100 flys, but I do remember they were ALL close to or just below :60, which is a time very rarely seen in practice ever for me.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Calvin S — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 18:12:28 GMT

As an age-grouper:

alternating T-3000 at beginning of every month followed by 30x100 holding at or better than your T-3000 time two weeks later, alternating for several months. Hardest because I hated it so much. And I promised myself I would never make a swimmer do a T-3000. And I never have.

College:

Freshman year training trip, stroke groups did 20x200 and distance group did 20x400, LCM. I did 20x200 BR on descending intervals in sets of 4: 3:10, 3:05, 3:00, 2:55, 2:50. Thinking back on it now makes my groin and knees hurt so bad...

Masters:

Switched to more speed type stuff last year and it has worked really well for me. Couple sets (SCY) that have been burners:

3x25 @ :05 rest @ P100

75 @ P200

2:00 rest

"VO2 Max"

(150 EZ after each set of 50s)

8x50 @ :45 @ P200

6x50 @ 1:00 @ P200

4x50 @ 1:15 @ faster than P200

2x50 @ 1:30 faster again than your "faster than P200"

and the hardest set I did this past SCY season was my buddy's idea:

20x50 @ 2:30 push max effort (averaged 25.6)

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Elaine Krugman — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 13:24:28 GMT

Actually, my 2,000 non-stop butterfly was self-imposed, since I train on my own. I hadn't set out to swim 2,000 yards, but once I got going, I wanted to see how far I could go before either:

A.) My shoulders got sore

B.) My husband (who was shooting video of it) protested!

I had previously set out to do a 500 fly to qualify for Butternuts; however, I kept going to 900 yards. At that point, the camera's battery had died, and the video stopped. My husband stopped me to let me know, and he was concerned about my shoulders, even though I felt great!

My shoulders ended up just fine, because I swim with a low arm recovery and do a lot of shoulder PT exercises to keep them strong. Since I didn't suffer any repercussions, I decided to see just how far I could go. This time, my husband set up the tripod, so he wouldn't have to hand-hold the camera-- a good thing, since my swim took 44 minutes!

Although the camera stopped in the middle to write the file to the card, my husband started it up again and shot the second half as well. He stopped me, though, because the card was full and the battery was almost dead. I know I could have swum more, and my shoulders weren't even sore the next day.

If you want something to put you to sleep, watch this:

Elaine's 2000 Yard Butterfly- Part 1

Elaine's 2000 Yard Butterfly- Part 2

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Mendrys — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:27:42 GMT

One day for the Saturday 3-hour workout where we normally did 10,000 SCY my coach said to me "I have an easy day for you today, only 5000 yards......butterfly" but to be honest it wasn't non-stop, not even close to the 2000 yards that Elaine was given!

The hardest true set was 10x100 SCY FR on 1:00. I wasn't able to complete it and could only do 4 before having to rest a few seconds before starting the next one.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

smiley92407 — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:58:16 GMT

My hardest set was my FIRST 10,000 yard workout with the main set as 100x100's broken into five rounds to keep us guessing back in 1976. Nothing else since then has scared me!

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Elaine Krugman — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 19:36:34 GMT

That's brutal, Britta! My legs are killing me just thinking about it!

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Britt03 — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 17:08:27 GMT

not sure it was the hardest. But it is close. I just found this set I swam in 2019. And I know I will do it again once we are back on SCY. LEG BURNER!

4x through
1:30 breaststroke vertikal kick
75 breaststroke 90% on 1:05
4x25 breaststroke all out on 0:30
after the 3rd 25 30s breaststroke VK
1min rest
8x25 breaststroke with parachute on 0:30

RIP Maria Thrash! You wrote the best breaststroke sets and knew how to push each and every one of your swimmers the right way!

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Kyle Deery — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:34:29 GMT

😱

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Kyle Deery — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:33:31 GMT

It can be tough to get back going again. Glad to hear you made it back to the pool!

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Badger — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 20:11:03 GMT

Holy moly.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

habu987 — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 20:28:32 GMT

I was mostly out of the water for about 6 years. I went to a college that didn't have a varsity or club team, so I pretty much stopped swimming cold turkey, then only got back in the water with masters when I was working a high stress job after college and started packing on the weight.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Karl_S — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 16:47:52 GMT

I recall Jim Thornton relating a tale of a masters team-mate doing 11x400 IM in an hour. That a 5:27 interval. The most I have ever done in a single workout is 4, but never as repeats.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Kyle Deery — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 01:35:31 GMT

It is great that you have two separate swim lives. Kids and Masters. How long did you take off in between?

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

02ER5 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 20:03:01 GMT

wow

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

02ER5 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 20:02:04 GMT

wow

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

habu987 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 15:51:46 GMT

As an age grouper: Three sets come to mind.

Full 2.5 hour Saturday SCY practice all fly after losing a stupid bet with my coach in the weight room (it's been nearly 20 years since then and I don't remember the exact details of the bet anymore, but I think it was something like I bet him I could do X number of dumbell curls with a 20 lb dumbell). My coach let me put fins on after about 45 minutes, but it was still somewhere around 9000 yards all fly. It was the #1 most painful set/practice I've ever done.
SCY 100s FR on 1:10 to failure. We did this as a benchmark set in the fall and spring every season and the lactic acid would hit you like a sledgehammer.
King of the Mountain--Start off with a SCY 100 on 2:00, then 1:59, 1:58, and so on. Drop :01 each time and when you miss the interval, drop down to 75s, then 50s, then 25s. We did it a couple times per season for a 2.5 hour Saturday practice and the sheer amount of lactic acid built up by the end was excruciating.

As a masters swimmer: There are a few candidates.

A set we did last month that ended up with a total of 3300 yards kick, of which 2500 was with fins. It was a mix of 300s and 400s kick with some swim or pull in between. That's the first set in years where I just flat out bonked. I crashed with about 30 minutes left of the practice and that last half hour was excruciating--no energy and my quads and hamstrings were locking up like crazy.
A set of 8x200 SCY FR off the blocks on 5:00 that I did about a decade ago, if memory serves it was 1 straight 200 then 3 broken 200s, twice through. What made it brutal was that I was just a few months into my swimming comeback after an extended hiatus and the pool temperature was in the upper 80s. We'd get out of the pool and lay on the deck in between 200s and the coach would pour water on us.
8x150 SCY BK with fins on ~1:30 rest, trying to make it underwater to the far flags off of each wall; speed didn't matter, just the underwater distance. That was back in 2013, I think, and I spent that season training for just the 100 and 200 back. I mostly swam on my own that season and that was a solo set I did. Major, major oxygen deprivation, but excellent conditioning for both of those races. Out of all the sets mentioned, besides the 9000 fly from about 20 years ago, this is the only one I would not do again.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Elaine Krugman — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:22:38 GMT

It wasn't a "set," but if it's open to my interpretation, my hardest swim was a non-stop 2,000 yard butterfly.

RE: What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

Jay Eckert — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:41:45 GMT

Repeat 400 IMs!