Working on 500 Free Time

You're asking great questions, Montana. You could look at improving the efficiency of your stroke - are there things you can do to improve that help push you through the water faster with the same or less effort? Is your hand entry good? Is your initial pull good? Do you finish with strength? To me, efficiency is more important than trying to increase stroke rate at this point, otherwise you will just be spinning your arms and getting tired. A good coach can help you with this, but it's going to take time. Focus on one, maybe two things, each month and get your muscle memory strong, then work on another area.

500 Freestyler here. I am a big advocate of you need to be able to train at your goal pace. For instance, when I was coaching the middle distance/distance group for a college team, and some of the girls had goals of breaking 5:00. That is 1:00/100 or :30/50. So Any fast stuff we did had to be at or below goal pace. 25s needed to be under 15, 50s under 30, and I went as far as up to 200s if we happened to do them off the block or on a slower sendoff. Note that I am not saying EVERY 25/50/100/200 etc. was meant to be held under pace. Just any fast stuff. I wanted the girls to "feel" what that speed was like, what that time was like. The 500 is a controlled sprint (with the evolution of the 200, I would say it is now THE controlled sprint). You go out to slow and you will find your opponents (be that other swimmers or the clock) so far ahead that you won't have enough distance left to catch up. Go out too fast, and you will discover there is a lot of distance still to cover and not a lot of energy left to do it! I would advocate taking your goal time for this year, divide it out into increments of 25/50/75/100 all the way up to 200 so you know what times you need to hold on each of those. Then start incorporating some fast work into your workouts where you try to hold that pace. Ideally you want to be able to hold repeats of those times at those distances with about a 1:1 work to rest ratio (so for 100s, if I wanted to hold :59 trying to go under 5:00, I would go 6, 8, 10, or maybe even 12x100 at 2:00...that's :59 seconds of work, followed by about 1:00 rest). Hop you don't get lost in all that. I went kind of technical on you there. Definitely agree with Jeff that just swimming 5200 isn't going to accomplish much for you. No matter the event, no matter the goal time, if you want to hit the goal, you need to come up with a plan, and one more detailed than just "I will show up a few times a week at the pool and swim." (I am generalizing here, not calling you out specifically).

Thanks for the suggestions.

I haven’t been doing sendoff intervals when doing the 10x50 sets, just swimming at that pace, 51.5 per 50, for the whole 500 without stopping. Maybe I could try 5x100 on an interval of 2:00? My pace per 100 right now is about 1:44, so this would allow for about 15 seconds rest before the next sendoff. Maybe I should increase my stroke rate to get faster?

First off, I'll be a little self-serving, but if you want workout ideas for pacing for a 500, scroll through my blog January through April of 2012 starting here - forums.usms.org/entry.php. I was writing the High Volume Workouts for USMS that year (they have now disappeared from the archive) and had oriented those towards training for two of the world's three greatest races, the 400 IM (#1) and the 500 free (#3). The 200 fly, of course, is the world's second best event. I also swam my best time of my Masters' career that year, going faster at age 45 than I had in my 30s. Anyhow, you should get some good ideas of pacing and a variety of sets. If I can find old offline copies I saved of the workouts, I can share those (just message me and I'll see what I can dig up) With some reiteration from above 4-5 dolphin kicks will kill you in the 500. Google Townley Haas, Clark Smith or Zane Grothe and find videos of their races. They don't do that and they went like 4:08 or something. 1 kick is probably warranted, 2 might be OK, but at 3 you're already in the danger zone. Breathe as much as you want and probably more than you think. Google Sun Yang videos and watch him take 3 breaths in a row going into a turn, then another one coming out. The 500 is an aeorbic effort (e.g., requiring oxygen!) Technique, technique, technique - you want to be able to swim as smooth as possible with as little effort as long as possible. Check out Total Immersion (www.totalimmersion.net/), GoSwim (https://www.goswim.tv/) and/or Swim Smooth (https://www.swimsmooth.com/) Then go find a coach who will watch you and correct your technique, ideally video'ing you so you can see what you're doing wrong. Oh, and you shouldn't need to do workouts longer than 3K, 4-5x per week. Think about ~1K warmup (but make it meaningful) Main sets of about ~1750 Cool down ~250 Of course, you can do more if you need, but the key is to make as much of the workout "count" as possible and be focused on your technique and pacing simultaneously. I'm not quite a complete USRPT guy, but much of your main set training should be done at or as close as possible to race pace.

First off, I'll be a little self-serving, but if you want workout ideas for pacing for a 500, scroll through my blog January through April of 2012 starting here - forums.usms.org/entry.php. I was writing the High Volume Workouts for USMS that year (they have now disappeared from the archive) and had oriented those towards training for two of the world's three greatest races, the 400 IM (#1) and the 500 free (#3). The 200 fly, of course, is the world's second best event. I also swam my best time of my Masters' career that year, going faster at age 45 than I had in my 30s. Anyhow, you should get some good ideas of pacing and a variety of sets. If I can find old offline copies I saved of the workouts, I can share those (just message me and I'll see what I can dig up) With some reiteration from above 4-5 dolphin kicks will kill you in the 500. Google Townley Haas, Clark Smith or Zane Grothe and find videos of their races. They don't do that and they went like 4:08 or something. 1 kick is probably warranted, 2 might be OK, but at 3 you're already in the danger zone. Breathe as much as you want and probably more than you think. Google Sun Yang videos and watch him take 3 breaths in a row going into a turn, then another one coming out. The 500 is an aeorbic effort (e.g., requiring oxygen!) Technique, technique, technique - you want to be able to swim as smooth as possible with as little effort as long as possible. Check out Total Immersion (www.totalimmersion.net/), GoSwim (https://www.goswim.tv/) and/or Swim Smooth (https://www.swimsmooth.com/) Then go find a coach who will watch you and correct your technique, ideally video'ing you so you can see what you're doing wrong. Oh, and you shouldn't need to do workouts longer than 3K, 4-5x per week. Think about ~1K warmup (but make it meaningful) Main sets of about ~1750 Cool down ~250 Of course, you can do more if you need, but the key is to make as much of the workout "count" as possible and be focused on your technique and pacing simultaneously. I'm not quite a complete USRPT guy, but much of your main set training should be done at or as close as possible to race pace. blah, blah, blah, something about how 45-49 500 FR at 2012 USMS Nats was the greatest masters race (and one of the top 5 in person races, period) I have ever witnessed, blah, blah, blah :P

First off, I'll be a little self-serving, but if you want workout ideas for pacing for a 500, scroll through my blog January through April of 2012 starting here - forums.usms.org/entry.php. I was writing the High Volume Workouts for USMS that year (they have now disappeared from the archive) and had oriented those towards training for two of the world's three greatest races, the 400 IM (#1) and the 500 free (#3). The 200 fly, of course, is the world's second best event. I also swam my best time of my Masters' career that year, going faster at age 45 than I had in my 30s. Anyhow, you should get some good ideas of pacing and a variety of sets. If I can find old offline copies I saved of the workouts, I can share those (just message me and I'll see what I can dig up) With some reiteration from above 4-5 dolphin kicks will kill you in the 500. Google Townley Haas, Clark Smith or Zane Grothe and find videos of their races. They don't do that and they went like 4:08 or something. 1 kick is probably warranted, 2 might be OK, but at 3 you're already in the danger zone. Breathe as much as you want and probably more than you think. Google Sun Yang videos and watch him take 3 breaths in a row going into a turn, then another one coming out. The 500 is an aeorbic effort (e.g., requiring oxygen!) Technique, technique, technique - you want to be able to swim as smooth as possible with as little effort as long as possible. Check out Total Immersion (www.totalimmersion.net/), GoSwim (https://www.goswim.tv/) and/or Swim Smooth (https://www.swimsmooth.com/) Then go find a coach who will watch you and correct your technique, ideally video'ing you so you can see what you're doing wrong. Oh, and you shouldn't need to do workouts longer than 3K, 4-5x per week. Think about ~1K warmup (but make it meaningful) Main sets of about ~1750 Cool down ~250 Of course, you can do more if you need, but the key is to make as much of the workout "count" as possible and be focused on your technique and pacing simultaneously. I'm not quite a complete USRPT guy, but much of your main set training should be done at or as close as possible to race pace. Hey- would you be willing to answer a quick question via PM? don't want to hijack this thread.

Maybe I could try 5x100 on an interval of 2:00? My pace per 100 right now is about 1:44, so this would allow for about 15 seconds rest before the next sendoff. If you can make this you should definitely be able to hold faster than a 1:44 pace in a race. That's really not much rest. Personally I think 10x50 is a better set for pacing a 500. If your goal is 8:00 then try something like 10x50 on 1:15 holding under :48.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody. Calvin, I’ll try your suggestion of a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio tomorrow when I swim at the Y. It'll be my first swim since getting back from a week-long vacation. :) I’ve revised my goal; I think it was too aggressive originally, like somebody said in the thread. My new one is just to get my time in the 500 free below 8 minutes. If I can get to that time I'll be comfortable swimming it in my first meet. I'll keep you all posted on what I hope will be my progress on reaching this goal-- I'd like to accomplish it by the end of this year!:applaud:

(I just want to add that I am a Canadian whose favourite event is 400m free, so you Americans with your 500 yards (457.2m!!) talk is always good for me. Thanks. Great thread.) :)