Working on 500 Free Time

(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.) :) I am swimming the 400 this afternoon!

... 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).... Calvin, I'm not criticizing the need for pace work, but I have a question about the 1:1 work:rest ratio, especially for the shorter repeat distances. Do you really think that if someone can hold P500 for repeats on a 1:1 rest ratio they have a shot at the corresponding add-up time in a meet, rested? That seems impossibly optimistic to me. Take 50s, for example. I am pretty sure I could do a whole lot of 50 fr holding :35 on a 1:10 send-off. For example: today I did 11x50/1:00 holding :34s. (That was a very good performance for me right now.) It seems plausible that I could do a lot more than that on 1:10 holding :35s, but it is incomprehensible to me that I could go 5:50 in the 500. Even if we call those :35s actually :36-flat to accommodate the turn, that's still a 6:00 add-up. My best 500 as a masters is 6:09. I did that 10 years ago when I was in much better shape. I'm thinking 6:30 is pretty realistic now, (holding 1:18s) maybe 6:20 (holding 1:16s) on a very good day. Now before you suggest that my problem is endurance, I should report that my drop in pace with increasing distance tends to be much less dramatic than average. My 100 time is almost always faster than what one would project based on my 50. My 200 time is almost always faster than what one would project based on my 100. Am I just not sucking it up and going as fast as I am capable in the 500? I suppose maybe. I'm thinking that the pace I could hold for 10x50 on :15s rest might be a reasonable predictor of my 500 meet time. (Maybe I should try it, but it sounds very painful!) I know that 4x50 on :10s rest is usually as reasonable predictor of my 200 time, (and that hurts like crazy! especially if I go multiple rounds.) I agree that doing a lot of work at pace is extremely good training, (if you can't go :35 for a 50 you aren't going 5:50 in the 500) but I don't see that what you can do on a 1:1 work:rest ratio is any kind of gauge as to whether you are ready to hold that ace in a race. Your thoughts on all this?

I am in about the same situation as you are. If you look for '500 free improvement needed' I got some very good suggestions I've been using. couple comments from what I've learned so far: 3 UDKs max for me. When I'm warming up swimming 500 - 1650, I'll do 3-5, but other than that, 3 max. I just started light lifting, very high reps, perfect form 5x per week. I used to lift a lot and very intense. I think I'd get hurt now doing that. Mostly swim on my own, try for 1 masters / week on Saturday but has been hard to get there in the summer. Usually 5-6 times per week, 4000 yards. Goal is 'll be happy when I go 'm really working on form now, don't know how much you do. I thought I had good early vertical forearm and I didn't. posted some video and got good comments. I used to do 10x100s on 1:50-2:00 and 1:15 or less for time, but I'd die at 250 in the 500. I changed to do 10x100s at 1:50, then 1:45, and now 1:40 at below race pace, usually 16-17 for all 10. Also do 10x50s on 50 at below race pace. I think these are even better. My 50s and 100s at a meet would be slower, but I believe my 500 would be close to 6:30 now. I want to go 1:15/20/20/20/15.

I guess my goal when coaching was to make the swimmers feel what a :30 or a :59 felt like. And to know what one felt like when you are sucking wind at the end of 10x100 on 2:00. You can’t tell me you want to break 5:00 in the 500 but not tell me you know what it feels like to string together 5 100s that are 59.99 or faster (not you personally but just a general “you”). More anecdotally, from this year I think the best I averaged was 58.9-59.1 or somewhere in that range. Went 4:58 in the 500 at mid season when I rested, and I was :55 followed by 4 1:00s. Certainly helps me know what my speed equates to in time. And now that I think about it, my better training came in the second half of the SCY season. I think the two times I remember doing 10x100 my average was actually closer to :59+ (which brings it more in line with how I performed when I rested). I missed my taper in the spring so my 500 there didn’t correspond to the kind of training I had been doing. I also realize different strokes for different folks. Not saying mines the only way (I know you aren’t accusing me of that either!). But all this talk about race pace training, I kind of look at a set like that as another way of race pace training. I want to feel what a 59 feels like. So I. Can find that groove in my race. My greatest protege was 4:54 in her best 500. The other girls I trained, while most didn’t break 5:00, it doesn’t mean what I was having them do wasn’t working. Most of them couldn’t hold 59/1:00 for 10 100s (some not even close) and for the most part what they held on average ended up coming close to what they held and went in their best 500s. And yes, in most of those cases, they were NOT sucking it up and going as fast as they could in their 500s. Afraid of pain.

Swam at the Y a couple days ago. Calvin, I used your suggestion of a 1:1 work-to-rest ratio, but I messed up on the amount of rest. I swam 6x500 on 1:40 but I only rested 1 minute between 100s. I was way ahead of the timer—by about 10 seconds—on each length of the first two 100s! Will try it again tomorrow with 1:40 rest between 100s.

I guess my goal when coaching was to make the swimmers feel what a :30 or a :59 felt like. And to know what one felt like when you are sucking wind at the end of 10x100 on 2:00. You can’t tell me you want to break 5:00 in the 500 but not tell me you know what it feels like to string together 5 100s that are 59.99 or faster... Can't argue that. More anecdotally, from this year I think the best I averaged was 58.9-59.1 or somewhere in that range. Went 4:58 in the 500 at mid season when I rested, and I was :55 followed by 4 1:00s. Certainly helps me know what my speed equates to in time. And now that I think about it, my better training came in the second half of the SCY season. I think the two times I remember doing 10x100 my average was actually closer to :59+ (which brings it more in line with how I performed when I rested).... ...The other girls I trained,... for the most part what they held on average ended up coming close to what they held and went in their best 500s. Interesting, that's pretty consistent data. Now I'm wondering if a lot of the difference I perceive is the difference between 50s and 100s. 10x100@P500 on a 1:1 work:rest ratio is likely a lot more difficult than 20x50@P500 on a 1:1 work:rest ratio. .... Afraid of pain. Guilty as charged, but I've endured some pretty mind-bending 200s bk and 400s IM.

Also more anecdotes: I did this set twice LCM this spring/summer. Averaged around 1:08++/1:09-. Lets call it 1:09 even. Final 400 time was 4:35.9. Pretty close on. Now, I did NOT go 4x1:09 in that race. I went out hard and faded hard. But the average is pretty consistent across the set and my tapered races :P EDIT: for consistency's sake, I do not do the LCM version on 2:20 (2x1:09 = 2:18). I stay with 2:00.

I guess my goal when coaching was to make the swimmers feel what a :30 or a :59 felt like. I don't know, to me a :30 or :59 feels a whole lot different after 15 seconds rest versus 1:00 rest.

... I used to do 10x100s on 1:50-2:00 and 1:15 or less for time, but I'd die at 250 in the 500. I changed to do 10x100s at 1:50, then 1:45, and now 1:40 at below race pace, usually 16-17 for all 10. This is consistent with my thinking. It may be necessary to start out with a generous interval just to get to the point where you can do Nx100@P500, but after that's accomplished, it seems essentially to whittle the interval down to the point where you are getting only ~:15 rest to be well-prepared for the 500. I don't know, to me a :30 or :59 feels a whole lot different after 15 seconds rest versus 1:00 rest. For sure.

I know what you mean about the UDKs. The other day I swam with just 1 UDK per turn. Today I’m gonna try 3. I’m not sure yet how many will work best for me.