gary p wrote:
At what distance are you trying to get your pace below 1:30? That's a key component to formulating a plan.
Oly distance swim. So, 1650y.
ETA: At this point I am just using USRPT as a framework for getting faster through the end of January...and, expected that I'd have to determine how to extend that speed to a continuous 1650 after that. First Oly race isn't until late April...and my goal for 2018 year is to break 25 minutes for the Oly swim. Thus the pace target.
gary p wrote:
As to whether you should go for more than one failure, the answer is "absolutely yes." One of the critical tenants of USRPT is that swimming to failure (neural fatigue, unable to hold the pace) is the catalyst for improvement, and you should structure the sets so that you swim to failure 3 times (or two consecutive failures) almost every time.
yes, I've read that. I had an offline conversation with SnappingT, and he recommended the 20x100s. Initially 3 failures wasn't a concern. But, as November progressed I reached the point where the first failure was ~15+, at which point I might only fail once more or not at all. I followed up with Tim on this same issue, but I know he's busy (and I'm just a random internet guy) and I hadn't heard back...hence my question.
As noted above (in todays workout), I increased the pace this morning (to 1:36), so I'm back to failing three times. But, I'll increase the "offering" to something like 25-30 to ensure I fail correctly as the month progresses. I figured that was the case and that I was "leaving something on the table", by stopping short.
gary p wrote:
While the science behind that claim is far from unimpeachable, I've had great success using USRPT to train for shorter distance races (500 and under) in the past. For races up to 200, the criteria for changing pace is quite clear. First of all, the "offering" is 7.5 times race distance, so 30x25 for 100 (on 15 seconds rest) and 30X50 (on 20 seconds rest) for 200. If you can do 4x race distance without a failure (i.e. 16 consecutive repeats) at pace, or you can do 6.5x race distance before failing the set, you're ready to advance the pace. Things get a little murkier at distances beyond that. The "book" calls for 30x50 or 24x75's for 400/500 races, but I've only found good workout-pace:race-pace correlation with 75's. The manual also calls for 30-35x75 or 24-30x100 for 1500/1650, but again I've personally found the correlations lacking. I'm still trying to find the right repeat-distance/#-of-repeats combination which correlates to 1650 race pace, but I suspect it's probably something like 18-20 consecutive 150's or 12-14 consecutive 200's. I'll have a better idea when I get a chance to actually race a 1650 again in mid-January.
Ok, yes that's another question that I'd sent to Tim in the same message...in a slightly different form. I'd asked how to correlate the 20x100 pace to expected 1650 pace. ie, pace+10s or whatever. Sounds like you don't think it does, and that in general your experience at middle distance (and greater) is that longer work intervals correlate better with race results than the "book" currently prescribes.
I guess what you are learning makes sense compared to the shorter events, where the work-interval is a larger percentage of the race distance....eg 25% ish...and the total offering is (3-5x) many times the overall race distance. But, scaling that up to 1650 is unwieldy. I'd noted the same differences in the manual, but there isn't any explanation for "why". I'd actually done a bunch of google searching to try to find more data on the 1650 application.
Thanks.
Last edited by:
Tom_hampton: Dec 6, 17 10:17