I am by no means a fast distance swimmer. I normally train SCY and I am entering the 1500 at a swim meet coming up. Today I swam around 5k and in the middle did the following:
15x100 yards coming in around 1:10. My sendoff was 1:40 (30 seconds recovery).
That felt like a strong but controlled effort. My turns suck.
Anyone want to take a stab at how fast I should shoot for when I swim this 1500?
:)
Former Member
You may wish to look at this thread:
1500 Test Sets
My personal experience was that 100m repeat times tell you almost nothing about what you can swim continuously, unless you are getting less than about 5s rest. Try some sets of 400s and you will learn a lot more about what pace you can swim continuously - something 100s just won't tell you.
SCY to LCM can be like night or day in that you'll be swimming further without the benefit of turns, but like you said, your turns aren't so good. I am a distance swimmer and even though I always have swim time numbers rolling around in my head, I swim the 1500 like 4x400s or 5x300s and train accordingly, not just repeat 100s because for me, I found my hundreds to be slightly too much effort to maintain for the 1500, just enough so it wasn't realistic. But holding a 300 or 400 time for the entire distance seems to work pretty well. Or if your conditioning is great, maybe 8x200s and see how well you hold those times. Starting out, of course, with more recovery, and then not much recovery at all between them.
But if you can hold 1:20s, then you should swim the 1500 around the 20 minute mark or so.
I am editing now because I just realized I was still thinking yard time, not meters!! Sorry about that. I think that around 22-23 plus minutes would be more in the range for that 1500 m swim and that's holding 1:30s.
donna
My experience is that sets of 100 have an almost 100% carry-over IF you swim the 100s with 10 sec or less rest. I like 100s because you look at the clock and immediately know if you have changed your pace. I hate finishing a 400 repeat and realize that I got too comfortable.
Actually, you should mix it up. Some days go 100s on short rest, some days 200s 400s, etc.
i think you could come in under 20 min. (about 1:12 per hundred SCY) i try to build 1500 (1650) swims, breaking them into thirds. first third @ 13 SPL second third @ 14 SPL last @ 15 SPL.
Did 100's again today...
12x100 SCY coming in 1:09/1:10 with a 1:25 sendoff (15 seconds recovery). This was a pretty strong effort but the past 2 weeks have been very high yardage. :groovy:
Does this shed any more light on a 1500m prediction?
When I was younger and in shape (working on getting back there now - at least the shape part - haven't found a way to do the younger part yet), the best predictor was what I could do with about 5 seconds rest for 10 or 12 X 100. So we would go on the 1:10 and if I could hold 1:06 that was what I would likely be able to hold in the 1650. More rest invalidates the translation.
Leo
BTW, I also found a correlation between my times doing 6 X 100 on 1:07 to predict my 100 breaststroke time.
All I had to do to determine that the pace I could hold for 15x100 with 15s rest wouldn't work for 1500 continuous was a 4x200 set where I discovered that despite having no problem doing the 100s with 15s rest I could not hold the same pace for 200s in a sustainable manner. 4x400 with 15s rest will really reveal the pace you can do. Just my experience though.
Lindsay, I agree completely with this analogy. For some reason people seem to think that swimming sets of hundreds with 15 seconds rest or less or even more will equate to a 1500 m swim time. For MOST people, this is not a very good thermometer because it is a broken swim, not continuous, and continuous swimming is an entirely different fish to deal with. Like I had said before, swimming repeat 400s will better give a swimmer an idea of what their actual 1500m swim time will be. A 1500m is a long swim and trying to base it on hundred repeats may give the swimmer a false sense of actual swim time. Just my experience speaking here. I guess if a swimmer wants to base it on his/her hundred swim time, then swim 15 of them non-stop and find out.
donna
If you are training for the 1500 you ought to do repeat 500's (or longer) not repeat 100's. If repeat 500's are just too boring, you ought to do them on (based on how you are swimming) 1:20. Maybe do 2 on 1:20 and 1 on 1:15 5 times through.
I have been known to push the first 100 pretty good. If you feel like swimming a non-ande recommended method, try going out in a :59 on the first 100 and see what happens the rest of the way.
:dedhorse:
