The IM Lane

That sounds like a good set for IM; I mentioned the 40 x 25 set for one stroke b/c I know you mentioned swimming the 200s and I think that, applying some of the ultra-short race-pace training principles, 25 is a better distance to do at 200 pace for a long set. When I try to do long sets of 50s I can't hold 200 pace unless the rest interval increases a lot... and then that defeats the idea of ultra-short (i.e., get used to the race-pace by doing lots of shorter intervals with shorter rests; a principle most of us already apply when training for 1500+... lots of 100s at pace, w/ short rest). My training partners and I did a lot of training for the 400 IM over the last year and one of our staple sets became 80 x 25 on :45 IMO; i.e., twenty 25s on each stroke, and we held paces between 100 and 200-goal for most of the set. At :45, each stroke takes 15 minutes... then we would do a 100 recovery swim and start the next stroke on the next :00. This was our Sunday afternoon workout for several months and we saw our 4IM times drop a lot! I was swimming around 7:00 last fall and swam a 6:37 in March, and the only regular feature of my training regimen last spring was that set of 25s (I had a fairly erratic winter-spring w/ illness and life transitions). I know they say USRPT doesn't work the same for IM as for individual strokes, but I think the fatigue you learn to work through in that long set really helps to simulate meet situations, where we struggle to hold form on *** and free, for example, after going out hard in fly and back. Those frees at the end of the set are not easy (we often drop the interval down to :40 or even :30), but you can hold form and pace for 25 (if we had to turn and finish a 50, the form would fall apart really quickly). Thanks for the feedback! I would be curious to see how I hold up for 80 (rather than the 32 I swam) x 25. I'll give it a try and see what happens. Since I will be racing 400 IM AND 200's of fly and ***, I'm trying to train for all of them.

That sounds like a good set for IM; I mentioned the 40 x 25 set for one stroke b/c I know you mentioned swimming the 200s and I think that, applying some of the ultra-short race-pace training principles, 25 is a better distance to do at 200 pace for a long set. When I try to do long sets of 50s I can't hold 200 pace unless the rest interval increases a lot... and then that defeats the idea of ultra-short (i.e., get used to the race-pace by doing lots of shorter intervals with shorter rests; a principle most of us already apply when training for 1500+... lots of 100s at pace, w/ short rest). My training partners and I did a lot of training for the 400 IM over the last year and one of our staple sets became 80 x 25 on :45 IMO; i.e., twenty 25s on each stroke, and we held paces between 100 and 200-goal for most of the set. At :45, each stroke takes 15 minutes... then we would do a 100 recovery swim and start the next stroke on the next :00. This was our Sunday afternoon workout for several months and we saw our 4IM times drop a lot! I was swimming around 7:00 last fall and swam a 6:37 in March, and the only regular feature of my training regimen last spring was that set of 25s (I had a fairly erratic winter-spring w/ illness and life transitions). I know they say USRPT doesn't work the same for IM as for individual strokes, but I think the fatigue you learn to work through in that long set really helps to simulate meet situations, where we struggle to hold form on *** and free, for example, after going out hard in fly and back. Those frees at the end of the set are not easy (we often drop the interval down to :40 or even :30), but you can hold form and pace for 25 (if we had to turn and finish a 50, the form would fall apart really quickly). Thanks for the feedback! I would be curious to see how I hold up for 80 (rather than the 32 I swam) x 25. I'll give it a try and see what happens. Since I will be racing 400 IM AND 200's of fly and ***, I'm trying to train for all of them.