Hi, I just joined USMS last month. I swim for fitness, and I have been doing this for a long time. I am working on lowering my time in the 500 free because I would like to swim in meets someday. I train on my own almost exclusively, except for an occasional workout with a masters team. I have 2-3 hours a week to practice except during the summer months when I have a lot more time to train due to having summers off from my job as a teacher. My current time in the 500 free is 8:40. My goals are to bring this time down to under 8 minutes by the end of the year and to under 7 minutes by the end of next year. I am 6'1" and weigh 193 lbs. Any suggestions that will help me reach my goals are appreciated!
From a coaching standpoint, for those who're really training for the 500 and/or 1000...or *those* people who train for the 1650, I think doing 3x500 as the threshold set works better than 3x300 for masters swimmers *in general*.
Over the years I've been coaching, it would probably take all the fingers on both hands and all my toes, if not more, to count the number of swimmers I've had who would throw down pretty drastically different avg 100 paces from a 3x300 set vs a 3x500 set...
I just abbreviated, but agree with your points.
Every swimmer is different. What I know from my experience, when I devoted some seasons to training for the 1000 and the 1650, is that I almost never did race pace repeats in workout longer than 150.
For example, the year I swam my best Masters 1000 and 1650 (excluding the rubber suit years '08 to '09), one of my favorite pace sets was a broken 1650 done as:
3 rounds of
3 x 50 on 0:45
2 x 100 on 1:25
1 x 150 on 2:05
Followed by an extra round of 3 x 50
I ended up going 17:07 that year and, when I look back at my training, my pace times on best efforts on the 150s on those miles, multiplied by 11, were right around 17:00. My 1000 time correlated pretty closely with my performance on the 100s of that set.
My point is that you don't need to do long-distance repeats to swim fast on long distance events. That's why I prefer the 3 x 300 vs 3 x 500 ... it gives me a better idea of my 100 threshold pace and I spend more time doing 50 to 150 repeats at race pace.
Also, if truth be told, I'm a pretty crappy workout swimmer as a Masters swimmer, relative to my ultimate racing speed ... which is more fun than being how I was in my youth - an exceptional workout swimmer and an occasionally good racing swimmer.
YMMV
From a coaching standpoint, for those who're really training for the 500 and/or 1000...or *those* people who train for the 1650, I think doing 3x500 as the threshold set works better than 3x300 for masters swimmers *in general*.
Over the years I've been coaching, it would probably take all the fingers on both hands and all my toes, if not more, to count the number of swimmers I've had who would throw down pretty drastically different avg 100 paces from a 3x300 set vs a 3x500 set...
I just abbreviated, but agree with your points.
Every swimmer is different. What I know from my experience, when I devoted some seasons to training for the 1000 and the 1650, is that I almost never did race pace repeats in workout longer than 150.
For example, the year I swam my best Masters 1000 and 1650 (excluding the rubber suit years '08 to '09), one of my favorite pace sets was a broken 1650 done as:
3 rounds of
3 x 50 on 0:45
2 x 100 on 1:25
1 x 150 on 2:05
Followed by an extra round of 3 x 50
I ended up going 17:07 that year and, when I look back at my training, my pace times on best efforts on the 150s on those miles, multiplied by 11, were right around 17:00. My 1000 time correlated pretty closely with my performance on the 100s of that set.
My point is that you don't need to do long-distance repeats to swim fast on long distance events. That's why I prefer the 3 x 300 vs 3 x 500 ... it gives me a better idea of my 100 threshold pace and I spend more time doing 50 to 150 repeats at race pace.
Also, if truth be told, I'm a pretty crappy workout swimmer as a Masters swimmer, relative to my ultimate racing speed ... which is more fun than being how I was in my youth - an exceptional workout swimmer and an occasionally good racing swimmer.
YMMV
