What is the hardest swim set you have ever done?

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!

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

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!

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.  

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

or

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

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:

3x

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)

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.

This is fantastic and terrible at the same time!

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.