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!
Well some things are too good to be true, the 1:35 pace for the 1500 based on 15x100 on 1:50 was a total illusion. When I set my watch for 1:36 and did a set of 200s I discovered I was actually slowing down each 50 even though my perceived effort was constant.
Lindsay -
Sometimes you have to swim repeats of longer timed sets (like the 4x400's noted above) to get the "feel" of the long race. You want to get to where your arm rotation and breathing feels "mechanized" to the point that you could almost determine your pace based on strokes/length. You don't stop focusing on technique, you just improve your ability to swim like a machine.
I think your experience with the 200 kind of bears this out. You are not swimming 15 100's, the feel is completely different over 1500.
Well some things are too good to be true, the 1:35 pace for the 1500 based on 15x100 on 1:50 was a total illusion. When I set my watch for 1:36 and did a set of 200s I discovered I was actually slowing down each 50 even though my perceived effort was constant.
Lindsay -
Sometimes you have to swim repeats of longer timed sets (like the 4x400's noted above) to get the "feel" of the long race. You want to get to where your arm rotation and breathing feels "mechanized" to the point that you could almost determine your pace based on strokes/length. You don't stop focusing on technique, you just improve your ability to swim like a machine.
I think your experience with the 200 kind of bears this out. You are not swimming 15 100's, the feel is completely different over 1500.
