Sam and Lionel recently raced 1,500 meter long course for fun (and a Benjamin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORRG_t91om4
Sam was 20:00 and Lionel 19:38.
AFAIK, they are both really “all in” focusing on swim improvement this winter. I don’t see any obvious sign of faster times here. Am I missing something? Sam was evenly splitting 1:20s and Lionel averaged 1:19s overall. I am guessing this long course meters pool pace likely puts them both in a B or C swim group that’s around 2 min back of a competitive 70.3 field and around 4 min for an Ironman long course distance. Isn’t that roughly where both have been mired now for a couple of years other than days when they had an off day or bad luck in the swim group/got stuck solo?
If these full time, coached pros have plateaued in their swim level or even maybe regressed a bit in Lionel’s case, that’s pretty dispiriting for most age groupers to contemplate.
It’s not smart to read too much into this. The thing I’d say is Sam and Lionel looked better. More aligned and he didn’t check the weather as badly as I’ve seen it in the past (checking the weather = two eyes out of the water on the breath. ).
The only way to make an assessment is to know what they did the day, week (morning) of this race. If this was thrown into the schedule for fun, with no “meet” preparation or anything like that, I think those are good results. And that seems very likely.
One other thing: we cannot really compare these guys to age group swimmers. Not just because they aren’t focusing on the swim race the way a swimmer would, but they really don’t know what they are doing. Their streamlines off the wall are “interesting”, their starts are even worse, and their ankle mobility is nonexistent. I cannot believe they went as fast as the did! They would easily drop time focusing on those things. Do some form of 600/800 yard sets 3 times per week with fins, lots dolphin kicks off the wall and I think they go 15-20 seconds faster in just a few weeks. Does it make sense to do that? Maybe so, but I’m pretty sure they are not - and would be if they were swimmers - so I don’t like the comparisons.