I'm typically a 1:08 to 1:12 IM swimmer, but do 100's in the 1:50 or 2:00 send-off lane. Usually come in on 1:47-1:52 for repeat 100's in a 50m pool.

you're telling me you can barely make the interval in a set of 100s in a SCY pool in the 1:50 lane? you must either swim with very little effort when you train, or you wear 3 wetsuits when you race. or your pool is really meters.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

That would be my duh moment. Yep, 50m pool. Sorry, must have been the oxygen deprivation from my sets this AM.

I agree with Monty.

I think I would struggle with a large set of 100s SCY leaving on the 1:10, I could probably manage 5 of them, maybe 8, but after that..... 1:15 I could probably do all day long.

1:25 is more or less all day long for me in SCM.


I've swam 53/54/56 (embarrasing) in Kona.

i m curious who gived you a beating with that kind of swim fitness???


i wish Jordan would tag along with me for one full summer of open water swimming in Penticton. I did it with a few swimmer of his level and they were shock at the results once they play the game a little differently in open water.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
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Have to agree with David in NY. I'm a former swimmer and routinely do my 100 repeat sets (usually 10 x 100) on 1:15. As David said, we former swimmers get a lot out of our flip turns and streamline off the wall. My first 140.6 swim last year was a 1:07. I had to be put back on course a few times because no one took the time to paint a line on the bottom of the Choptank River for me. : ( With some work on the open water techniques that might drop, but I've found that breaking my stroke pattern to breathe and sight tends to throw me off my game so I either slow down and do it right or swim fast and bounce from one kayak to another until I get done...

Your English is so good for a second language.

I swam with wetsuit bottom only, and I stupidly tucked my trisuit under the pants causing a parachute. Still: Adrian Cameron - who posts on this forum (Optimal_Adrian) - beat me out of the water by 2 minutes (it was 1600 M on my garmin) . Based on what he posts, I think he could do 20 x 100's on 1:20 in SCM and hold 1:09's

"I've found that breaking my stroke pattern to breathe and sight tends to throw me off my game"

if you did a non wetsuit swim, your time should have been 10 to 12 minutes faster. if it was a wetsuit swim, 15 to 17 minutes faster. based on your ability in the pool. did you win the swim? if not, then you needed to be drafting in that front group or at least a second group. you don't need to sight that much. sight the feet, or the bubbles if you can't see the feet, in front of you. trust the guy in front of you, especially if there's somebody else in front of him.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

My pool workouts are typically around a 1:40 base (roughly 1:30 avg for Nx100) and I've clocked four swims in the 68-70 minute range at Lake Placid (wetsuit). More often than not, I use a fixed rest of 5"/50scy, but never exceed 20" per interval (over 200scy).

Using this protocol, my effective base (avg elapsed per 100scy) is usually an indicator of overall race pace. When training for HIM, I typically do more 50 and 100 intervals, which lowers my effective pool base pace, and correlates to a slightly faster race pace (vs. IM).

For me, this has been the best performance indicator, but there are several variables that would render further extrapolations tenuous.

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"The right to party is a battle we have fought, but we'll surrender and go Amish... NOT!" -Wayne Campbell

There were only 150 +/- entrants in the 140.6 and less than half of them were in my swim wave so it wasn't very crowded. I jumped early and got out off the front of the main pack but wasn't able to catch the lead group of 4-5 so I ended up swimming solo most of the way. I'm doing Eagleman next week and hoping that I can navigate the crowd to find a pair of quick feet that will keep me swimming in a relatively straight line.

I believe turns in the pool can play a large role in the disconnect between pool times and OW times. Former competitive swimmers can have extremely quick and efficient turns. In SCY this can lead to as much as 3 sec per hundred over an avg or open turn. In addition, for these former swimmers, the turn is a mini rest every 15-20 seconds. (Flip, push, g_l_i_d_e, swim) Start adding up these efficiencies and you can see where former competitive swimmers really get their advantages in the pool over most triathletes. Former swimmers know how and where they can conserve energy when getting through a long pool set.

Now go to the OW. No walls, no turns. 1 advantage lost. No rest/glide off the turn. 2nd advantage lost. The gap they have over slow turn/no glide swimmers can start to close or even disappear. For many former pool swimmers just starting out, swimming for an hour in the OW has little in common with swimming for an hour in the pool. Gone is the advantage gained on each turn and combined with swimming straight through without any breaks/glides, it makes sense why some fast pool swimmers can't seem to reach their expected times in OW. It also explains why some "slower" pool swimmers are able to beat these "faster" pool swimmers when the walls are removed.

Additional time can also be gained or loss when we start looking at specific OW skills like sighting and drafting.

Just a guess, but I think whatever the drop off rate is it will not be linear. A hallmark of our average fast swimmer, the 1:10 folks, is that they likely have been swimming for a while and thus have a lot of skills, among them, the ability to adjust to conditions, navigate without stress, think while they are swimming fast, they'll remember to pick out landmarks before the swim starts, they'll probably actually warm up, etc. They are, on average, likely to much more relaxed and use that to their advantage. On the physical end, most significantly they also very likely have a speed they can dial back to that is going to be quite a bit closer to their 100% pace than a lesser swimmer can shift down to. That is, whatever their race pace is, its likely to be closer to what they were doing those 100s at then someone in the slower lanes. In most endurance events, I think one of the big differentiators as you move up in the talent pool is that the 95% effort speed is a lot faster. So, the drop off as you move to the slower lanes will be bigger. Or maybe not . . .

Should have said my 2 fastest 51.xx times were non-wetsuit. I've had 3-4x 51.xx wetsuit swims as well. But Kona best was 53.xx a few years back. I think I've never mastered open water as I can still go a solid 200 free in a pool (1:56 off the blocks this winter). I know Jordan uses his 200 free as a guage or predictor but it doesn't work for me at 8,000 yard weeks. I fatigue like nobody's business over 2.4 miles but still have a little pop in shorter swims. Lack of pool time is my excuse. And when I do swim masters workouts I am a bit afraid of the pain that comes with 1:10 intervals. Pretty sure I can get to the front pack if I did what I should. I just have the hardest time making pool time in my current life.

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Swimmer
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"Start adding up these efficiencies and you can see where former competitive swimmers really get their advantages in the pool over most triathletes"

this argues for slower swimmers to actually swim faster than the 7min for 10sec leave interval normalizer. but i think this might be offset by the ability of the faster swimmers to handle an open water swim, that is, they are more likely to draft effectively, swim in a straight line, sight better and so forth. i just think the more data the better in terms of establishing the best normalizing formula.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Best I ever got in masters was the 1:40 lane (slowest or second-slowest lane).

I've gone 60 and 62 in two IM swims, and 27-28 in several halfs. Wetsuit, of course.

So...pool pace doesn't translate directly to open water swimming in a crowd.

I think its a pretty fair estimate. When I first started doing IM's I was comfortably in the 1:20-1:25 lanes and my first few IM times were dead on an hour. As I've gotten older I've settled into the 1:30 lane and my last few IM's have been between 1:05 and 1:07 - went 1:06 at Kona last year. I want to focus a bit more on my swim this year and am shooting to be closer to an hour at Kona this year. I think its reasonable for me to get down to about a 1:25 base on most days and every once in awhile when I'm feeling especially good to 1:20. I think if I can do that I'll be in the 1:02-1:04 range.

I am usually a 1:35-base swimmer at masters (sometimes 1:30 on a good day) and I swam 1:11 this year in Kona. I think that the argument that faster swimmers have better open water skills is generally true. Also, in a non-wetsuit swim like Kona the faster swimmers are probably less effected by the lack of a wetsuit. Similarly, I think slower/less efficient swimmers like me stand to gain a bigger advantage in wetsuit-legal swims. That's my two cents :)

"So...pool pace doesn't translate directly to open water swimming in a crowd."

i don't know. slower swimmers will get a low of 6 and a high of 10sec a hundred out of a wetsuit. a 62min wetsuit swim, add 8min for the no wetsuit, you get 1:10. my standard "add 7min for 10sec leave rate" would predict a 1:12 in kona. so, you're 2 to 5 min faster than the predictor. i think it just would depend on the particular swims you did in order to know how well this holds up for your case.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Dan I think you are right on in this. And I think the origin is right where you put it:

30 x 100's on 1:10 coming in around 1:02/1:03 = Origin You can very closely predict your IM time off of this based on how much slower you do this set. Origin = the time of the lead pro pack

It gets complicated when you where a wetsuit and the lead pro does not. For simplicity, maybe call it 4 minutes?

I'm a "TI-style" swimmer and get a MASSIVE boost from a wetsuit. I hate to think about swimming 2.4 miles without one.

I'd say that was the case for me. I had been doing tris for almost 15 years before I did my first Kona, including plenty of HIMs with some in rough ocean water. I loved the draft in a HIM or IM swim and could almost always stay on someone's feet nearly the entire distance. Therefore, triathlon experience may need to be included in your formula.

Open water times are fairly meaningless. The courses might not be the same length, conditions are always different. Is it a lake, river or ocean swim? Is it a wetsuit legal swim. If you want to see if you are improving in open water look at % place in the field and time behind the first place person out of the water.

But if you have to use time, in my experience, a good translation from pool to open water pacing is 10 seconds a 100 slower in open water vs the pool pacing. Typically, the better pro swimmers will be closer to a 6-7 seconds slower vs their pool pace. Put on a wetsuit and take the 10 seconds back.

I hope this helps.

Tim

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This is a while ago,but:

Late onset swimmer. Able (and sometimes willing) to lead a 1:30 SCY lane. At peak, could hang in a 1:25 lane if there was one for a whole workout but I was lazy and never tried to make that stick. Probably did 10x100 on the 1:20 a few times, as a test set not a whole workout. Generally a bit over 4225y for a one hour postal.
Kona: once 1:01, once 1:05 (lumpier conditions) Canada with wetsuit :58-:60 a number of times.

Up at the sharp end, I know one person, non pro, great swimmer, who I would put in that 1:10 SCY lane category, who has multiple :52-:54 in Kona.

FWIW I generally didn't get as much help from a wetsuit as most seemed to, so I always (all two times :) figured 60 flat was possible in Kona. I was satisfied with the 1:01 coming out of the water, a little surprised in the moment by the 1:05 but then realized "everybody" was slow that year (lead pack :52 - the 1:05 and 1:01 were pretty much the same place overall.)

I think you're on the right track, but I'm not sure 10 seconds difference in leave interval maps 1-1 to 10 seconds long distance swim speed. That is to say, the faster swimmers tend to take (need) less rest. Let's say the 1:10 folks get 5 seconds rest. They can tolerate that, so they swim in that lane. The 1:20 folks get, let's say 8 seconds on average. The 1:30 folks, if they are swimming strongly, will tend to get 10 seconds, maybe more in my experience...like I could come in on the 1:15 without much trouble. So I'm getting 15 seconds rest, and only swimming 10 seconds slower per 100 than the real fish, even though my leave interval is 20 seconds slower. Cut that rest to 5 though, and I'm in trouble, so I'm not ready to move up to the 1:20 lane.

That would more or less fit with my own anecdotal data: 7-8 (kona) minutes difference between me (strong 1:30 lane) and my 1:10 lane chum. Half what you posit, but still useful.

I think what you may be working your way around to showing (and I endorse it) is that becoming a better swimmer, manifested/demonstrated by moving up a lane, has real, valuable benefit at the Ironman distance, and I agree - I have to agree - the two times I qualified it was clearly on the relative strength of my swim, despite not being a swimmer in my youth. Not that the swim is make or break for everyone, but it definitely was for me. The people all clustered right behind me almost all had significantly slower swims. For me to get enough faster biking and running to beat them if they could swim with me wasn't likely, I was pretty close to my potential in those disciplines. Almost nobody who is swimming 1:10+ for 2.4 has exhausted their swimming potential, regardless of where they are in their cycling and running.

1:50 lane - 1:12 non-wetsuit IM

i would say there is something very wrong with a swimmer that lost 10 sec by 100m in open water vs pool. My experience, perhaps 2-4 secondes depending if the water is calm or not. Wetsuit put you even or faster than pool pace.

Open water time on course like hawaii, old IMC, IMLP, and many other races that use permanent marker and have relatively repetable condtion become standard and reference in our sport. While there is the odd hawaii day with current or big waves... in general...it s very consistant and comparable.

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram