How far do you swim every week - AT RACE PACE !

I cannot attain race-pace during training. :badday: Of course you can,you are just looking at it wrong.I can't swim a 100 in workout nearly as fast as I can swim a 100 at a meet,but I can swim a 50 as fast as the 2nd 50 of a 100,and that's race pace.You want to work on your 200 BR,can you swim a 100 at your 200 pace,if not how about a 50 or even a 25? I swim between 1/2 and 1/4 of each workout at race pace,the rest warm up.cool down and recovery swims.

My team also typically does a, "Fast Friday," type set with a few different variations. Sometimes it is 50's, sometimes 100's, occasionally even 200's. But my favorite is the choice set on 5 min. For me, it gives enough time to do even 200s and still have time to recover. As a percentage of overall swimming, I'd estimate this is probably only 10%, as even on these days we'll do non-race pace warm-up/warm-down stuff. However I usually try to do doubles on these days, especially if I like the set, which could put it at 20%+ of my weekly total. We'll do some other stuff here and there that might fringe on race pace, if done properly. Some descending sets, even longer distances, getting to 90-95%+ may fall in that category. If I include these, it would probably add at least another 5-10% of my weekly total. I certainly wouldn't call the other stuff I do, "garbage yardage," by any means. We do some very helpful stroke drills, technique focus, etc. A recent set had 20 x 50 on a very tight interval (turned into touch + go for me, not race pace but sure felt like it at the time); again I think it is helpful to have a mix of many things as part of a greater training program. Plus a proper warm-up and warm-down is essential to avoid injury. And I don't see anything wrong with doing a mile for time here and there (I think we probably do that about once every 2-3 months).

We do a lot of slower paced (not slow, just not race pace) stuff that focuses on technique. I don't know if it is Popov's philosophy, but I've heard that he trains slow so that when he does it fast, he has the technique. That's the philosophy our coaches have. We do some fast stuff at least once a practice, and sometimes we have days that are mostly sprints and fast-paced sets. I typically keep my pace up to a little below race pace for most of the workout anyway. I'd say that a good 50% of my sets are now done at slightly below race pace. This is a recent development, but it seems to be helping.