Ultra Short Training At Race Pace

I wanted to add my little n=1 experience with USRPT. As I've posted elsewhere, I've taken a long time off swimming- really about 14-15 years with one 6-month attempt about 7 years ago. I have thoracic outlet syndrome like several other forum folk do and after finally making a breakthrough there, I decided to re-enter the pool. I chose USRPT because keeping volume down is really appealing and because I train alone, so can infinitely customize my workouts. ANYWAY: I started in october and didn't really buckle down and read the papers well until early december. I swim 2-3 times a week and am in and out of the pool in 45 minutes or less. I picked 100 FR and 100 BR to train for, not because these were historically my best events but because the sets weren't quite as scary as longer distance. I do 25's on :30 SCY with a target time of :15 initially and now have switched to :14. I do this twice a week at minimum and mostly fail 3 x before the 14th or 15th rep. (dropped goal time once I had success a few times at :15). BUT.... I swam :59.5 100yd FR this weekend which fits with what I had trained for... I swam a technically poor race, missing a couple turns and breathing every stroke, so I suspect if I can use the technique I practice with that I would have more success. My 100BR is the same set but with :18.5 as a target and done on :40. I usually fail a bit earlier on this set and have not hit it "successfully" if success is doing 20 or 30 without fail. I went :36 for 50BR this weekend, again with poor technical aspects but close to practice. I also do the 200Fr set with 50's on :50 or :60 holding 31.5-32.0... on :60 I can do 18-20 of them and on :55 or :50 I struggle more, so I alternate from time to time. Will maybe swim the 200FR at an upcoming meet, but I worry I wont be able to finish well since the longest I swim in practice is 50yds. I have not done any of the 50FR stuff, but did 27.5 this weekend. So, my takeaway is that with just a few months of swimming 've gone from totally out of shape to being able to meet some basic starting goals! I feel like I've got a handle on how to go even faster in the future. My shoulders and fatigue are MUCH better with USRPT than traditional training and this is all coming from being completely out of shape, struggling to pick up a bag of dogfood and with mobility that didn't permit great technique initially.

I wanted to add my little n=1 experience with USRPT. As I've posted elsewhere, I've taken a long time off swimming- really about 14-15 years with one 6-month attempt about 7 years ago. I have thoracic outlet syndrome like several other forum folk do and after finally making a breakthrough there, I decided to re-enter the pool. I chose USRPT because keeping volume down is really appealing and because I train alone, so can infinitely customize my workouts. ANYWAY: I started in october and didn't really buckle down and read the papers well until early december. I swim 2-3 times a week and am in and out of the pool in 45 minutes or less. I picked 100 FR and 100 BR to train for, not because these were historically my best events but because the sets weren't quite as scary as longer distance. I do 25's on :30 SCY with a target time of :15 initially and now have switched to :14. I do this twice a week at minimum and mostly fail 3 x before the 14th or 15th rep. (dropped goal time once I had success a few times at :15). BUT.... I swam :59.5 100yd FR this weekend which fits with what I had trained for... I swam a technically poor race, missing a couple turns and breathing every stroke, so I suspect if I can use the technique I practice with that I would have more success. My 100BR is the same set but with :18.5 as a target and done on :40. I usually fail a bit earlier on this set and have not hit it "successfully" if success is doing 20 or 30 without fail. I went :36 for 50BR this weekend, again with poor technical aspects but close to practice. I also do the 200Fr set with 50's on :50 or :60 holding 31.5-32.0... on :60 I can do 18-20 of them and on :55 or :50 I struggle more, so I alternate from time to time. Will maybe swim the 200FR at an upcoming meet, but I worry I wont be able to finish well since the longest I swim in practice is 50yds. I have not done any of the 50FR stuff, but did 27.5 this weekend. So, my takeaway is that with just a few months of swimming 've gone from totally out of shape to being able to meet some basic starting goals! I feel like I've got a handle on how to go even faster in the future. My shoulders and fatigue are MUCH better with USRPT than traditional training and this is all coming from being completely out of shape, struggling to pick up a bag of dogfood and with mobility that didn't permit great technique initially.