Have you done a T-30?

There's a whole host of physiological knowledge published and for aerobic system training it is all based on T-30s. If you don't have a T-30 or an estimate of one then you are overlooking a large aspect of how to get faster. Now, the only time I will usually do a t-30 is during the 3,000 postal. Other than that I will do a 200 max and 500 max and find critical velocity. I will use critical velocity as a substitute for t-30. It's not a bad option.

Does it have to be swimming? A treadmill at the health club will tell you how far you've gone in 30 minutes. Of course running is not swimming, but both are aerobic exercises. I guess this might help gauge your aerobic conditioning if you did it periodically, but one of the main purposes of the T-30 is to measure your anaerobic threshold. As gull mentioned, you can use your 100 pace from the T-30 to determine what sendoffs you should be going on for various types of sets. Unless you're a very slow runner, I don't think you'd want to use your running pace for this!

We swam a 1000 for time in practice and used the pace per 100 as an estimate of our anaerobic threshold (En2). To calculate En3 we subtracted 7% from that pace. I think it is reasonably accurate and easier for Masters swimmers than a T-30.

There's a whole host of physiological knowledge published and for aerobic system training it is all based on T-30s. The problem is that there is not a lot of information regarding the training of Masters athletes.

Does it have to be swimming? A treadmill at the health club will tell you how far you've gone in 30 minutes. Of course running is not swimming, but both are aerobic exercises.

Do you have someone that can time and count for you. It is helpful information, but it would be hard to do by yourself, not impossible, but hard.

Yeah, I last did one of these years ago. I'd always lose count. We'd do them a handful of times during the year to see where everyone was with their aerobic and fitness levels. Obviously the goal was to do more laps every time we did that as the season went on. I'd say you can find better things to do with a half-hour of swimming than that.

I just did my first 3000 Postal. My approach was to do 30 X 100 on interval; I learned a lot about my 50 and 100 pacing and how to keep my pace when my body was fatigued. Are there any other approaches for this type of competition?

There are always the 3000-yard (in the fall) and one-hour (in January) postal swims. Those can be helpful to just your overall fitness level. Skip

The T-30, IMHO, is good for finding a training interval (see Kevin Williams workouts). However, I can't imagine swimming it every week or so - too tough to count laps. Why don't you swim one to find your training interval, do about six months of interval training, then do another. I think you'll find (as I did) that your T-30 will drop - which is the point, after all.