I always thought it would be cool to be able to break 5:00 in the 500. While it would be a bit of a stretch I feel like it's potentially within reach and given enough of the right kind of training I could do it. That said I also feel like every second between me and the 5 minute mark is going to get harder and harder to knock off.
I've always been, and continue to be, more of a breaststroker than a freestyler. I have no ankle flexibility so I pretty much always need to deal with dragging two brakes through the water. I've never really trained seriously for free events even though I do try hard and consider the longer frees to be my secondary events.
To give you an idea I swim about 3000-4000 a day, probably realistically average 4-5 times a week. I can and will increase that over the winter as we head into the meets starting in January. Intervals average in the 1:15-1:20 range, sometimes dipping to 1:10. I can pretty comfortably hold 1:10-1:15 pace depending on the set. Doing a 1:00 100 from a push is hard but not impossible.
So far my fastest masters times in the 200 are 1:55 and the 500 a 5:18. I know I can go much faster in both, in that 200 I took water instead of air on the turn at the 100 and was choking and coughing for the last 100 and still somehow managed a best time. The 500 was the last event of a long weekend of swimming and I was exhausted. I bet I could have done a 1:53 and a 5:14 given better circumstances.
Anyway, any training tips or things to work on? Ideal way to split it? Is the 5:00 500 going to be ridiculously difficult or given enough training reachable?
Thanks guys. That and the :50 100 (I'll save that one for later) are two swimming marks I always wanted to check off my list.
I remember it vividly. I went a 4:59 the very first dual meet my sophomore year in HS...then proceeded to not break it again for the rest of that season! I really don't know what went wrong.
Wow, 4:59 without being rested? I was lucky if I went 5:10 unrested during my high school years. All in all, I like the 500 much better today than in my high school days.
Wow, 4:59 without being rested?
Yeah, I was pumped! I think the State cut was like a 4:57 so I thought I'd get it no sweat. Little did I realize I wouldn't get that cut until the following season. I think that was the first time in my swimming career that I hit a plateau like that. Not fun at all.
I never thought of myself as a distance swimmer as I never swam anything over a 200 all through college. My senior year my coach decided to put me in the 500 at the champs as we had a very deep field in the 50, which was on the same day. I usually swam the 50 but I wasn't all that competitive. I ended up swimming 4:54 which blew my mind. I feel I wasted all of college training in the sprint lane when I could have been a decent distance swimmer. Now I'm too lazy to train the distance that would require me to swim a competitive 500. But maybe you have motivated me to try again. Oh by the way I went out in a 1:55 for my first 200 and held 29-30 for rest. So, I agree you should get that first 200 to at least a 1:56-1:57 to leave a cushion.
Justin, it is a cool goal and you should be able to do it from where you are. I'm sure you'll get inundated with better advice, but here are some initial thoughts:
Splitting: Take a look at results of recent nationals as you'll see a number of people under 5 minutes, but also a number of ways to get there. In my experience, you always want to feel like you are negative splitting the race. In reality, you often don't, but gunning it too hard on the 1st 150 to 200 can be a real killer to keeping up the pace. It's always a very conscious effort on my part to feel like I'm cruising through the 250 mark. The 'moment of truth,' though where you need to learn to swim through the pain is from 300 to 450 yards. I find I can always get excited about picking up the pace after the halfway point and I generally have something left in the tank in the last 50, but if I don't really bear down -- and really train to do this -- during the 300 to 450 mark, I fall off the pace very quickly.
Technique: If you look at the elite swimmers, they are motoring the 500 with a 6 beat kick the whole way. You probably don't need that to get under 5 minutes if you can have an efficient, powerful 2 beat that is well-connected with your pull & core rotation. However, if you can build a stronger kick, that will come in real handy during the last half of the race.
Training: Do a search on 500 free under the workouts and see if Ande Rasmussen or some of the other prolific posters there have offered up ideas. I'd certainly recommend you work on on getting your "normal" 100 intervals down to 1:10s where you're comfortably going sub-1:05 and be able to do test sets on 1:05, ideally doing more than 5 at a time. At a very macro level, if you're really targeting the 500, I'd train the predominance of your early season training geared towards the 1000 to build endurance and then, as you add in quality, build more speed by training towards a 200 while keeping sufficient distance sets on your aerobic days at low rest, but a pretty good clip.
Absolutely, in my opinion, an excellent post! Almost verbatum with regard to what I would say/suggest. I would also try to find a good pacing swimmer that has that 5:00.00 barrier broken that has the workout time available to help out. I have one or two in my pool (at sparatic times) that like to do this sort of thing, and I would hope that there are more people like that willing to help. I would most likely train on their hip (literally) where you are either splitting the lane or in lanes next to eachother and you stay on the hip; that way you can learn how to draft as well.
I quit training for middle distance swims in 1952, I only trained to do 100s. I quit training altogether in 1958 and just played waterpolo and swam in meets with the 3 days a week waterpolo practices. Then after a 4 year layoff started swimming marathon races in 1963. This is when we started doing 100s on 1.05.
Never tried a 500 but could do a mighty fine 440.
We never swam a 500 in our day in Canada.
That was always my goal. The closest I ever got was not all that close, 5:23 my freshman year of H.S. when I was doing both USS and H.S. team. After that I did H.S. only and never beat that time.
During the 20 years I took off, sometimes I would wonder if I ever had any hope of meeting that goal at my age, or if the window of opportunity, if there ever was one, had passed. I'm quite a ways off now, best masters 500 is 5:43. I think I'll settle for beating that 5:23 then worry about the next goal.
If you want a pracice goal set, I can usually go under 5:00 for 500 yards free about the time when I can start making 5 X 100s on the 1:05 in practice.
Making that interval means that I can repeat and hold a pace close to a minute per hundred yards without dying.
You should work on getting your 200 free time faster, since I think you need to be comfortably at 1:55 at the 200 to make it under.
Good luck.
I agree with this for the most part. The only part I take exception to is that I don't believe you (necessarily) have to go out that fast in order to break 5:00.
My best 500 (age 52) came the year I could comfortably hold minutes on 1:05 for 100's. I went 4:58.9 with splits of 57.3, 59.8, 60.6, 60.7, and 60.5 so I was 1:57.11 at the 200 and my best time in a flat out 200 (untapered) that year was 1:58.93. I never broke 5:10 in college but I never swam year-round until masters which I feel makes a huge difference.
This is one of my goals as well (under 5:00 in the 500). It used to be my best event in HS and college. I came out of HS going 4:28 or something and 4:23 or so in college. That was then though....this now!! Its seems like an impossible feat!
Since I just started back 2 months ago I've set this to be a long term goal. I haven't even done a 100 yet as I've only swam in one meet that was only 50's (and a 100 IM). I'd "guess" that I'm around the 2:00 right now in the 200, but won't know for sure until Auburn in Feb. As others have suggested it takes a lot of repetitive 100's and fast intervals, its a good mix of distance and controlled sprinting.
I was never a 500 swimmer, never really a freestyler. I could swim the 200 in 1:52, but my 500 was never better than 5:09. Not sure I swam it more than 3-4 times through out HS and college.
but reading this thread about going under 5:00 has inspired me to improve my 400m time. currently I have 4:41. which is about 5:21.
so for me to get down to 5:00 means I need to swim my 400 about 4:22. wow 19 seconds. I currently only swim the 100 at 1:00
for me to make 4:22 that would mean
1:03 / 1:05 / 1:07 / 1:07
I'll be swimming the 400 in Nov and then again in March. I went from 5:02 in march 2008 to 4:41 in sept 2008. my current goal was to get to 4:30, but getting to 4:22 (or 5:00 for the 500) sounds so much better.
"Waaaaaay back in high school, spent most of the regular season at :51 100 Free, 1:51 200 Free, and 5:12 500 Free. My 500 splits were "bell curve": 1st 100 fastest, each of the 100s slower than the previous one except for the 5th one (which was about the same as the 3rd 100). At the end of the season, shaved and tapered, my splits flattened out and did a 5:00.1 (:58.1 followed by four 1:00.5)."
Ouch.
