USPRT Workouts?

QUOTE=mjtyson;331940]I'm aiming toward a 1:30 5K (ahahahhahahaha) and for that my USRPT is 1:37 (SCY pool) leaving on 2:00. I mostly aimed at that pace due to the fact that anything more realistic would give me a USRPT that is way too slow. (My best 5K ever I think was 1:42 and mostly in the last few years I've been around 1:52 and 2:00.) I've been hitting the wall o/a 1:35. When I started I think I set it to 1:40 then down to 1:38 and recently down to 1:37. When I am at 1:35 I'll change my take off to 1:55 and see the failures flow in. I also do CSS. When I do distance tolerance I do it at my CSS + a few seconds per hundred. I think last week I did it with the tempo trainer set to 27.25 or smthg like that. I love doing those sets. One of these days I'm gonna write a blog entry about this: perceived efforts vs. actual. Before I had the tt and did CSS I would do long sets to get in what I called "horizontal time" (mostly for my back) and would try to keep the same pace throughout (like 3-5 x 1000). I wasn't a clock watcher, mostly went by perceived effort. Well with the tt beeping in my ear, I know immediately that the pace I would have swum by perceived effort would not have been fast enough. I know this because by the end of the 1000, it really feels like I'm pushing to keep up with the beep. I have no idea if any of this will help me this summer as this (USRPT) is still new. I'm doing the same two short swims I did last year (2 mile and 5K) but: dates changed this year so they're both on the same weekend one week before Boston Light and of course the vagaries of current, weather, etc. I've also got Swim the Suck again this year in October, and that really depends upon the dam outflow that day. I will have some immediate feedback though in a couple weeks when I re-test my CSS. We'll see. Well, your speed is similar to me and now what I am doing is to try 40 x 50 m before 3 failures. The pool is 50 m long. I started a few weeks ago and targeted 55", pushing off at 75", aiming to do 2 USRPT sessions per week. I have passed 55" on my 2nd session (passing means reaching 40 without 3 failures) and turned to 54" / 74" afterwards. Initially after the reduction my failure count was 20 23 25, thinking that I may be able to pass it soon, but in the next session I was not feeling well, only reaching 8 11 14, much worse than before, and 11 14 17 in the next session. However I admit that I haven't done any USRPT this week yet as I did a few long swims continuously over the last weekend - 4 km, 2.5 km then 5.6 km on 3 continuous days - and I was still not feeling good on Tuesday even after a complete rest on Monday. And now the pool temperature is so hot that I can no longer reasonably expect achieving my previous numbers. My CSS currently is around 2:00 / 100 m, however it is only a wild guess as I can never recovery well after the 400 T/T, making the 200 T/T much slower than my PB.

QUOTE=mjtyson;331940]I'm aiming toward a 1:30 5K (ahahahhahahaha) and for that my USRPT is 1:37 (SCY pool) leaving on 2:00. I mostly aimed at that pace due to the fact that anything more realistic would give me a USRPT that is way too slow. (My best 5K ever I think was 1:42 and mostly in the last few years I've been around 1:52 and 2:00.) I've been hitting the wall o/a 1:35. When I started I think I set it to 1:40 then down to 1:38 and recently down to 1:37. When I am at 1:35 I'll change my take off to 1:55 and see the failures flow in. I also do CSS. When I do distance tolerance I do it at my CSS + a few seconds per hundred. I think last week I did it with the tempo trainer set to 27.25 or smthg like that. I love doing those sets. One of these days I'm gonna write a blog entry about this: perceived efforts vs. actual. Before I had the tt and did CSS I would do long sets to get in what I called "horizontal time" (mostly for my back) and would try to keep the same pace throughout (like 3-5 x 1000). I wasn't a clock watcher, mostly went by perceived effort. Well with the tt beeping in my ear, I know immediately that the pace I would have swum by perceived effort would not have been fast enough. I know this because by the end of the 1000, it really feels like I'm pushing to keep up with the beep. I have no idea if any of this will help me this summer as this (USRPT) is still new. I'm doing the same two short swims I did last year (2 mile and 5K) but: dates changed this year so they're both on the same weekend one week before Boston Light and of course the vagaries of current, weather, etc. I've also got Swim the Suck again this year in October, and that really depends upon the dam outflow that day. I will have some immediate feedback though in a couple weeks when I re-test my CSS. We'll see. Well, your speed is similar to me and now what I am doing is to try 40 x 50 m before 3 failures. The pool is 50 m long. I started a few weeks ago and targeted 55", pushing off at 75", aiming to do 2 USRPT sessions per week. I have passed 55" on my 2nd session (passing means reaching 40 without 3 failures) and turned to 54" / 74" afterwards. Initially after the reduction my failure count was 20 23 25, thinking that I may be able to pass it soon, but in the next session I was not feeling well, only reaching 8 11 14, much worse than before, and 11 14 17 in the next session. However I admit that I haven't done any USRPT this week yet as I did a few long swims continuously over the last weekend - 4 km, 2.5 km then 5.6 km on 3 continuous days - and I was still not feeling good on Tuesday even after a complete rest on Monday. And now the pool temperature is so hot that I can no longer reasonably expect achieving my previous numbers. My CSS currently is around 2:00 / 100 m, however it is only a wild guess as I can never recovery well after the 400 T/T, making the 200 T/T much slower than my PB.