Kevin in MD wrote:
So, to the data, all this is for short course yards, in pool time trials, not meet times. 38 youth onset swimmers, 55 adult onset swimmers. The analysis was done on the average time for each athlete, some of these athletes have done a dozen time trials, others only one, but I figured this would represent the spread between athletes the best.
Hopefully this formats OK
AOS averages (55 athletes)
100 time: 1:32
500 time: 8:55
Critical Pace: 1:53
Strokes / 25: 22
YOS averages (38 athletes)
100 time: 1:12
500 time: 7:12
Critical Pace: 1:30
Strokes / 25: 18
If you are playing along at home, your average adult onset swimmer is:
20 seconds slower in a 100
1:43 slower in a 500
23 seconds / 100 slower in sustainable pace
takes 4 more strokes to cross the pool.
As interesting comparisons, if you extend the critical pace out to 1650, you get that an adult onset swimmer would be on average 6 minutes and 20 seconds slower than a youth onsets swimmer.
Another interesting little tidbit, for the 500, about 1/3rd of the YOS average under 7:00 for the 500 swim - only 3 of the 55 AOS swimmers I have data on have averaged under 7:00.
Wo don't get discouraged, if all you did was read on slowtwitch, you'd read account from Adult Onset Swimmers who have gone on to be quite good swimmers, but the reality is that it is quite rare. Not unheard of, but quite rare.
Interesting numbers there (I know it's a 2 year old post). I guess my 1 year of youth swimming when I was 12 technically counts as YOS, as I still do a bit of the s-style stroke that was taught to me at that time. Got in to triathlon at a race age of 31, so now been swimming for 10 years and I'm right at the avg times there for YOS, even with # of strokes/length, except I can't do a 1:12 off the wall, closer to 1:20ish using a 2-beat kick.
Never really swam much though, when I first got back in to swimming, I was around 2:00/100 at 6k/week and improved down to 1:40ish after 2 years, then got down around 1:30ish at year 3 at around 7-7.5k/week and since then volume has been inconsistent, sometimes taking winters almost completely off.
Interesting to see the stroke rate match up though, since the swim smooth emails keep convincing me I need to be swimming at 80spm, meanwhile I'm at ~60 at CSS. I actually had to slow down my stroke rate this past year and got faster. Just did savageman trying to swim at an ez pace, did just under 32 at about 50-52 spm.
How much slower to experienced swimmers stroke when doing super easy work? Or just not even worth it to think about it?