sentania wrote:
Wow.
Don't take this the wrong way, but when I swam in college we would do 30x100 on 1:30 - I would typically hold between 65 and 68 depending on the surrounding training.
If you can hold 1:01 for a significant number on the 1:30 or any of the combos you mentioned - I'm flabbergasted you couldn't make the lead group last weekend. There were 1:45 to 1:48 200 freestyle swimmers on my team that couldn't hold 1:01 on that set.
I know that adds no value, and I mean no criticism - just my observation.
What you describe sounds very much like how we trained the mid-d swimmers in my college program.
Digressing -
It seriously makes me wonder about my overall training structure - as right now I'm able to do about 1:13/14s for 15x100 @ 1:35 SCM - which would be a 1:07 for SCY. I'd have to screw up some serious motivation to turn in 1:10 SCM (or faster) several times in a row - and I would bet money on me being able to swim a 52. SCY 100 something from a dive right now. Yet - I was able to swim a 52 last weekend at IMTX and it felt like a walk in the park. ETA: even some of the swim sets that jonnyo has posted that are staples - seem really intimidating/impossible to me now - and possibly even back when I was in college - and in much better swim shape.
/head scratch
Yes, we train very similar to mid distance swimmers, because at least in the pro field, it is all about the start. I lined up next to Faris on Saturday. He got to speed WAY faster than me and as result, I missed the first pack. I've said this a few times on here already, but no one wanted to take control in the second pack, so a large gap opened up. I was not swimming all out and fully believe that I could have gone much faster. If I would have, one of two things would have happened. First, I would have swam by myself in "no man's land" came out of the water having expended much more energy than I had to on the day in the pack and would have had a whole group working together on the bike to chase me down. Second scenario would be to swim harder and have the entire group latch on to me and end up dragging the pack along expending more energy than everyone behind me. Then I get to the bike in a pack, but having worked harder than everyone else. Neither option is a good tactical decision (and likely the reason no one wanted to take control of the pack), and as Herbert embarrassingly pointed out on the bike build link (
http://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_s_QR_PR6_5089.html), race tactics played a large portion in my game plan. It is very rare that you can just "race your race" in fields as deep talent wise as this one was.