yesterday I swam a 1500 to get a sign up time. it's been nearly 6 months since i have swam anything over 400m. I had no idea how I should swim it, or how it would feel during. took off way too fast 1:15, then 2:25 at the 200 and 5:20 at the 400. but then averaged about 1:25-1:26 for the rest and ended upw ith 21:10.
it got me thinking about a 5km run. I don't run, but it seems that almost every spring I decide it's time to start and i do run 3-5 times and I always use a 5km as a test/goal distance.
my goal for the 1500 in 3 weeks is to be under 20:00 so I have 3 weeks to learn how to hold a 1:20 pace, as well as to prepare mentally how it feels to swim that long. but I find it funny that my goal for the 5km has also been to run it under 20:00
anyone else have similar times for the 1500 and 5km? (1650yd vs 3 miles)
Please accept my appology, I incorrectly applied the formula
5k's @ 20 min = 1.5 km ~ 24:00 LCM
I think you were right the first time.
1.5 km swim should be roughly equal to a 4 x 1.5 run, or 6k.
Since he is only running a 5k, the time should be 5/6ths of his 1.5 k swim.
The only mistake I can see is that you spelled Thornton wrong. You left out the first n.
Using Thorton's coefficient:
If your running your 5k's @20 min then 1.5 km swim should be ~ 16:35 if your dist swimming is as strong as your running
Former Member
Interesting question - A few years ago I saw a race for the USAT Aquathlon that was a 1500M swim and a 5K run. I thought those distances would be a pretty fair race for a decent swimmer and a decent runner. A good swimmer (not elite) could do the mile under 20 minutes and so could a good runner.
I entered the race and my times were within a minute of eachother. When I looked through the results there were many people who had the same thing too. I really enjoyed that race and would love to see more events like it. Triathlons annoy me since I spend about ten minutes swimming and an hour and ten minutes on the other stuff that I don't have a passion for.
Check out the link:
Usat Aquathlon National Championship 2009
www.athlinks.com/time.aspx
1. I see you live in Sweden. Did you ever meet any of the fellows in the wonderful documentary film, Men Who Swim?
no, affraid not. most things that make it out of Sweden are from the big three (Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö) I'm 2-4hrs driving from all of them.
2. Though you beat me by around 4 seconds (I swam the 1650 in 20:03.90), so technically I have no business advising you, I would like to point out that there is another way to swim the distance that might let you do a better time in the future while suffering less pain.
You swam in a meters pool, so the splits aren't entirely comparable, but the basic idea is that you started off fast and progressively slowed down till a little resurgence at the end.
For really extraordinary younger swimmers, going fast the whole way without too much regard to pacing is probably the way to go. But the older you get--I'm now 58--the more I am convinced that performance in longer events is much more dependent on good strategy and pacing than brute endurance.
A young fellow in my heat was a little ahead of me till the 650 mark. I had no sense I was speeding up, but suddenly I couldn't see him anymore, and I assumed he had take the lead.
He actually dropped way behind, the victim of over-enthusiasm at the beginning.
Live and learn!
one of my teammates (45) swam in the lane next to me. I prefer the 50 and 100 ***. but I am starting to like the challenge of swimming longer events. I built up a 2 second lead from the start and held it until about 600m at 700m we were even, and at 800m he was 1 sec ahead, and then he was able to pull away with a little more than 2 secs /100m.
I knew going in I was going to slow down, but my goal was more to minimize the difference between my average 100 and my max 100 split. turned out it was 3.5s so yeap I probably opened too fast.
a few heats later the winner in my age group swam 16:43:08 his last 100 was 1:03 after holding between 1:06-1:08 through out.
it's a shame I will have to wait 2 yrs before I can swim it again. but luckily I have several OW events between now and then.
Interesting question - A few years ago I saw a race for the USAT Aquathlon that was a 1500M swim and a 5K run. I thought those distances would be a pretty fair race for a decent swimmer and a decent runner. A good swimmer (not elite) could do the mile under 20 minutes and so could a good runner.
I entered the race and my times were within a minute of eachother. When I looked through the results there were many people who had the same thing too. I really enjoyed that race and would love to see more events like it. Triathlons annoy me since I spend about ten minutes swimming and an hour and ten minutes on the other stuff that I don't have a passion for.
Check out the link:
Usat Aquathlon National Championship 2009
www.athlinks.com/time.aspx
Swimmerlady, you might find my proposal for a "fair triathlon" amusing:
forums.usms.org/blog.php
