I am thinking about swimming a 1500m in an upcoming meet and am wondering what sort of sets I can swim to see what pace I can hold for that distance. Tonight we had a 12x100 set on 1:50 and I expanded it to 15x100 and came in on 1:35 on average. A coach I was talking to recently said that what one could do with 15s rest in a set like that you could likely do in a race at a meet. I am not quite so sure, 15s seems like a lot of rest. On the other hand the set wasn't that hard to complete and I had plenty left at the end. I was just concentrating on technique and getting 5m off every wall. If I actually held 1:35 that would be 23:45, which would be two minutes faster than the last time I swam it, two years ago, and I would feel really good about that, I was actually just aiming to go under 24:30, which would be a minute off my PB, which I did three years ago. It would also beat my secret nemesis' time... :D Which is the only reason for swimming such an insanely long race!
Any other suggested interval sets to gauge likely meet time? The thing that really gets me is having to swim without the pace clock and having to do 60 lengths before finding out if I hit my goal pace or not! Every 1 sec variance per 50m translates to 30s over 1500, which is both exciting and scary!
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Former Member
How about picking your pace, add 10 seconds per 100, round to the nearest 5 seconds of interval (to get in the groove), then follow up with 5 very hard, but steady, swims with 15 seconds over pace. The goal would be to emphasize a strong finish and a desire to negative split the nauseating last half of the race.
Another one that worked for me was to do sets of 5 repeats on a descending interval (knock 5 secs off each set) and try to hold the same pace through all 15-20 repeats.
The last half is not to be underestimated. The risk may also be that the groove you're in at the beginning 400-500m is too slow and you get stuck, so testing the next gear at the 1/4 or 1/3 points is good.
Good luck,
dV
How about picking your pace, add 10 seconds per 100, round to the nearest 5 seconds of interval (to get in the groove), then follow up with 5 very hard, but steady, swims with 15 seconds over pace. The goal would be to emphasize a strong finish and a desire to negative split the nauseating last half of the race.
Another one that worked for me was to do sets of 5 repeats on a descending interval (knock 5 secs off each set) and try to hold the same pace through all 15-20 repeats.
The last half is not to be underestimated. The risk may also be that the groove you're in at the beginning 400-500m is too slow and you get stuck, so testing the next gear at the 1/4 or 1/3 points is good.
Good luck,
dV
