"Also, note that Larsen Jensen completed 17 X 1,500 LCM on 20:00. He was shooting for 20, didn't get there. "

well, "I" certainly couldn't do that, but for a guy like Jensen that doesn't seem that bad if all he was trying to do was make them. 20:00 1500's is "only" 1:20's....

I suspect there is something more to the tale if Jensen was unable to get through that set.

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The chocolate chip cookies at Brown during YMCA New England championships back in the day were legendary!! I remember the way you describe the pool well... And yeah Erik was a monster in the making back when I was still swimming in the area!

You'll get no argument from me claiming this was a brisk walk for him!

LCM guys. Long Course Meters.

LCM guys. Long Course Meters. ///


Yes, and the times for LCM 1500 and short course 1650 are pretty much the same, give or take a few seconds. That is why i scaled up his 1000's to 1650, just so we could really see what a workout it was, comparing it to the 1500 also...

IIRC, he had to come in under 18min for each. So it wasn't just "make it." His "make" time was holding better than 1:12s.

EDIT: the "make" time might have been even faster than 18min. I just remember that there was a make time that was definitely at most 18min.

EDIT 2: nope, it was 18min - http://forums.usms.org/...ndex.php/t-3622.html

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IIRC, he had to come in under 18min for each. So it wasn't just "make it." His "make" time was holding better than 1:12s. //

Which goes even more to my point, Eriks swim was on the 16;30, a minute and a half under Larsen's make it time. Not even in the same galaxy. Erik's make it times had to be between 15;30 and 16;20 or so. And Larsen was in the same league as Erik, which just boggles my mind about this workout he supposedly did...

To put into perceptive here is his 1000 when he set american record back in 2008. Think it would be challenging but not impossible.

1 Vendt, Erik K 27 CW-MI 8:48.92 8:36.49
23.44 48.73 (25.29)
1:14.23 (25.50) 1:39.86 (25.63)
2:05.55 (25.69) 2:31.32 (25.77)
2:57.07 (25.75) 3:22.97 (25.90)
3:48.86 (25.89) 4:14.83 (25.97)
4:40.72 (25.89) 5:06.56 (25.84)
5:32.81 (26.25) 5:59.06 (26.25)
6:25.51 (26.45) 6:51.72 (26.21)
7:18.02 (26.30) 7:44.47 (26.45)
8:10.86 (26.39) 8:36.49 (25.63)

You may have taken this into consideration already Monty, but he was doing SCY and this means lots of turns which make it faster.

For context, the WR for 1500 LCM set by hackett in 2001 was 14:34 and his SCM record was 14:10 same year. So same distance but more turns equals 24 sec. SCY would be more turns again (don't know how many). What's the record (assume US) for 1000 scy? That would give some context on his pace.

I think the comparison is a bit apples and oranges. First, I don't think you can do a straight extrapolation from 1000scy to 1500LCM/1650scy. For instance, if I do 100's on the 1:00, by all accounts I should be able to do 400's on the 4:00, but I can't...anymore anyway.

Second, 1500LCM is 29 turns, versus 39 flip turns for 1000scy. So walls help maintain higher average speed. SCY is very much about maintaining speed off the walls for the length of the lap, while LCM is typically about maintaining DPS. The main point being, there is an expected drop off in speed between the two.

More to the point, 1650scy is a faster swim than 1500LCM - even though by 1650yds = 1508m. Consider the 2014 NCAA results, the top 21 finishers are all under 15min for the 1650. Now, lets look at the 2012 Olympics, the winner, Sun Yang is 14:31 - slower than the winner of the NCAA's. The top 7 at the Games were under 15min, most in the 14:50 range.

So as it relates to comparing Jensen and Vendt and their respective sets, I don't think it's quite that simple. Even if the total distance is the same, the swimmer doing LCM will be doing more actual swimming.

More to the point, 1650scy is a faster swim than 1500LCM - even though by 1650yds = 1508m. Consider the 2014 NCAA results, the top 21 finishers are all under 15min for the 1650. Now, lets look at the 2012 Olympics, the winner, Sun Yang is 14:31 - slower than the winner of the NCAA's. The top 7 at the Games were under 15min, most in the 14:50 range. //

I realize it is faster, but only by about .5 second per 100, so a pretty close comparison.(14;31 vs 14;24) I guess you can argue that doing flip turns makes it easier to do a 30k set, but I don't really see that as being true. More turns also means you have to go anaerobic more often, and use your legs a lot more too. But whatever, I think it was correct to scale up his 1000 time to a 1650 since he did 30, 000 yards. This was all about pace, just like Larsens set would have been, just a lot faster in Erik's case..


Now if you were talking about one 1000 and scaling that up to one 1650, then there would of course be some drop off, but not that much even there. For 19 of them I think it is safe to say that his pace would scale up almost to the tenth..And lastly, often the NCAA meet will be much deeper than the olympics. You get a ton of foreigners going to our colleges and every single fast distance swimmer we have at that meet. No 3 per country bull, just the fastest guys from a ton of colleges. Of course it misses the guys out of college, but overall a deeper meet non the less..

Just fyi, the 1650 scales almost exactly to the 1500 scm, where I believe the wr is somewhere around 14:10, just going from memory.

And the extra turns will definitely make the vendt set a faster swim than LCM. No question at all.

Edit, according to Wikipedia, 14:10.10 - grant Hackett 2001.

Edit, I just retread the thread and notice that guns buns already said what the wr was...

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Fair points. Really just want to point out that I think it's possible. I don't want to play the "I was there!" card, because as I mentioned, the rest of us were doing our own practice and certainly I didn't see every single one of the swims. It's kind of funny how I remember some of the specifics of that particular day, perhaps it's because I recognized what he did. However, to be honest, when it came to training sets with Erik, nothing really surprises me. I don't remember the specifics, but apparently while he was at USC, he did some 500FR/400IM combo set and dropped some ridiculous times during it as well.

As a note, his 1000 yard AR was a few years after college - I think coming out of his first "retirement". Competition time wise, I think for the most part, he was faster then before his first retirement.

Just fyi, the 1650 scales almost exactly to the 1500 scm, where I believe the wr is somewhere around 14:10, just going from memory. //

Well it is closer in time to the LCM time than it is to the SCM time i believe. No one has gone close to 14;10 for the 16;50, have they? I see mid 14;20's in my searches, so just about 7 or so seconds off the WR for 1500 LCM, and double that in comparison to the 1500 SCM.

Fair points. Really just want to point out that I think it's possible.//

It does seem possible, that is why i just don't come out and call bullshit, like some of the other swimming claims that have been made here. Like when someone said they saw Potts swim 10 to 15x 100LCM on the minute. They were so sure, but when i pointed out the fact that this would be a set for Sun Yang, and maybe a handful of other world class distance guys, they backed off on the claim. This all seems plausible, but i still cannot reconcile those two done on the 9;30 interval, and so close together and bracketed by several on the 9;45. Dude must have been on and swimming like a machine that day.

I think you're missing Monty's point. For a 30,000yd set, I'm gonna go ahead and wager that he's not pushing the envelope on every single turn, maximizing time under water, etc. the way you could for a one off. Having some experience doing challenging five hour workouts (albeit for cycling), I get what he's driving at - you can't go over the redline and expect to be okay. There's just not the recovery.

So, yes, if you are talking about WR performances, where guy are squeezing every last drop of optimisation out of the turns, etc., then yes, "SCY is a *LOT* faster than LCM." But for 30k? Even if you are generous and go way over on compensation, you're saying that Eric could do 19x1500LCM on an 18min turnover when Larsen couldn't even make 18x sub-18 on a 20min turnover. And he's an Olympic silver medalist in the 1500...

There are plenty of guys, though, who were way better in practice than in races. Vendt might have just been one of those guys who was the Michael Phelps of training. That certainly seems to be his reputation. The #2 set on most of these "epic set" lists belongs to Jeff Kostoff with his 4x5000 on 50:00. Kostoff still holds the US Junior record for 1000fr despite all the advances in suit technology, underwater, etc. And yet he was another guy who never performed at the same level on the big stage (he actually talks about it in some good interviews). For a guy who was that dominant in high school and in training, a 6th and a 9th in two Olympics is not exactly what you expect. Vendt's Olympic and WC record is obviously much better than Kostoff's, but you'd also expect that from someone who could do what he apparently has done in training...

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Yeah, but grant Hackett never swam scy :-)

I'm struggling to think of guys who would have done both the 1650 and the 1500 scm in peak shape, shaved and tapered.

But yeah, the scm to scy is almost exactly the right conversion. The 6 extra turns in yards makes up for the 8 extra metres swum.

Edit- playing with the speedo time conversion utility on swimswam, a 16:00.0 1650 converts to a 16:19.2 LCM 1500, and a 15:55 scm 1500

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You don't have to be pushing the envelope to make scm faster than LCM. Really, you don't. Even just routine turns are way faster, without trying to extend them with dolphin kicks off the wall.

And I'm not really arguing for or against the legitimacy of the 30x1000 as described. Just that it's faster to do that scy than LCM, without question.

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I swim with a guy who swam a Brown 10 or so years ago. we finished our set today and I start telling him about this set I read on some guy swimming 30x1000 on 10:00. At first, I couldn't remember the name... no lie, my friend goes, "there's only one guy I know that could've or would've done that set... Erik Vendt. He's fucking crazy". He swam with and against him from time to time in college.

I read an interview with Vendt somewhere and he said he fell asleep in the pool gutter after the last 1000!!! Have you heard this before??? Also, JOOC, do you remember what month/year he did this workout??? In any case, it is great to hear from a person who was actually at that workout:)

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if you look at the link you posted, it lists Erik's 30 x 1000 quite a bit differently than described here.

10 @ 10:45 10@ 10:30, 10@ 10:15

I still think there's more to the Larsen Jensen one. He could have done 18 min 1500s in his sleep...

On top of that, I've witnessed the u of Iowa boys crank out a set of 100x100 on 1:00. There were a number of them who made it, and none were nearly as good as vendt.

And, in that same link you posted, there's phelps 5000 in 46:34. Which works out to 5 9:20 's in a row, with room to spare.

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Hey, pm me your name and I'll say hi to Josh from you. I'll also mention the bar mitzvah thing - he'll get a kick out of it for sure.

Holy flying fish Batman, that's some crazy fast swimming and he's in theory mainly a middle D swimmer. That's about 55.9 per 100 scy for 50 100s in a row and equates to a 39:21 for the 4225 yd iron swim if swum in a 25-yd pool, in a practice swim:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I wonder what mike mcbroom could do that 5000 in. He did a 17:49 2000y late last year..

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Vendt is about 2.5 years older than I am - so I figure it was probably '97/'98 time frame and since the pool was setup SCY it was likely in the fall, probably Oct/Nov. I don't know if he actually fell asleep in the gutter - did spend some time there though.

The team we were on at the time was called Ocean State Squids (OSS) - we had a reputation for difficult training. I think Josh picked up a lot of his training methodology from his previous experiences as a swimmer at the Peddie School in NJ - I believe the coach's name was Chris Martin. So when I say I can't remember all the details, a lot of it has to do with the fact that the rest of us were getting are butts kicked too. Do I know he did the set, yes, I remember that. Can I say with absolutely certainly all the details, nope, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were accurate.