domingjm being you highjacked my post :) .... how are you interpreting this for a 2:00/per 100 guy like me.

realistically I'd like to work towards even becoming a 1:40/100 while holding on to my bike/run.

What should workouts look like base off 3 swims a week?

Thanks!

I'm certainly no swim coach, but I don't see why you wouldn't benefit, probably to an even greater extent than me. The pace that works me is about a best-effort 250. I've been doing these in sets of 100 with 20sec rest. It took two workouts before I determined that pace. That said, your goal distance is about 3x longer than mine, so presumably your repeat distances will be greater. But as Eric said somewhere in here, it's probably a good strategy to mix in a variety of distances with a variety of rest. I would definitely give it a shot. As a side note, over the distance that you're a 2:00/100 guy, I'm definitely a DNF guy. Haha.

So you're using your all-out 250 yd time as a pace per 100 yd for your 20 x 100 yd on 20 sec rest intervals??? That's different, usually people aim to hit their 1000 yd or 1650 yd pace in a relatively long set like 20 x 100. How does your 250 pace compare to your 1650 pace??? For me, i'd be about 5-6 sec/100 slower in the 1650 than in a 250, which is obv a pretty sig diff.

I've never done a time trial (in a pool) for anything over 500 so I'm really not sure how they relate. But yeah, my effort on the 250s was a pretty solid effort and I've been able to do 100s at that pace, having not failed until the 14th rep with 20sec rest. It was pretty rough but I enjoyed it after I was done.

OK, so how does your 250 pace compare with your 500 pace??? Also, did you rest for one interval and then continue??? How many more until 2nd failure, or did you make all 20???

Eh, 250 pace is maybe 5 or 6 seconds faster than 500 pace. Yes, I rested for one interval then continued. On that day I made it to 18 and tapped out. They ended up being 1:18/100 with 20sec rest (okay, maybe a couple 25sec). I could *probably* make 20 of them at 1:20/100. I'll probably bump it up to intervals of 125y on the next go-around.

Mainset:
20 minutes of 50s at the highest intensity you can maintain for the entire duration. Rest interval = work interval. If you can hold 30s, do them on a minute for 20 total.

If you slow down, take one off. If you are still slow call it a day and adjust your expectations tomorrow.

I had a great workout Sunday, felt alright Monday, and was crap yesterday. I think if I had a coach watching me who really knew what (s)he was doing, I wouldn’t have got into this hole. Meh. My hunch is that the more intensity based the program the more you need a guiding hand...

That said...

I am offering a money back guarantee swim program. Anyone who does for 4 weeks will make significant improvements.

200-300 warmup build so the last 25 is very intense.

Rest, recover, stretch for 90 seconds.

Mainset:
20 minutes of 50s at the highest intensity you can maintain for the entire duration. Rest interval = work interval. If you can hold 30s, do them on a minute for 20 total.

If you slow down, take one off. If you are still slow call it a day and adjust your expectations tomorrow.

Warm down = 200 easy. But make it smooth and when you are done with the warmdown you need to be able to tell yourself you could do 5 more (but don’t!)

30 minutes, 5 days a week.

It's successful right up until you pick up a chronic injury :)

I know a lot of people who use the RLRF, but they are constantly picking up injuries. You might not have yet, but I'd be conscious of this. Running is one of the most injurious sports out there.

No. I understand that it’s a popular prescriptive in the triathlon community because it can have the feel and look of FTP. But I’m not a big fan of “test sets.” I’d rather coach and observe the athletes I coach on daily basis and respond to what they are capable of doing in that workout and not what a test set told me they should be doing from a few weeks earlier. Getting athletes to peak performance is too dynamic to rely that heavily on a single test set to determine workouts moving forward.

My view of a lot of these popular test sets is to give “certified” coaches the illusion that they know what they are doing.

Hope this helps.

Tim