1500 meter swim..am I ever

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi, am I ever swiming 1500 meters straight in training? Most things I have read state no…last workout I did 10x200 meters with 30 seconds between each. I swim 2-3 times a week…I KNOW its not enough but besides that any siggestions on how to breakdown the 3 sessions? I am not a swimmer…not flip turns and fancy trunks here. So when people say kick drills and breathing drills I dont know what they are talking about…I am an ok swimmer in the pool i do 1500 in around 27…i am not looking to kill the swim just improve a few minutes.

Thanks!

2

I was a distance swimmer in college and the only time I swam a 1000 or 1650 straight was on meet day. Most of a typical practice was sets of 200s/300s/400s on limited rest. Mix it up by varying paces and rest intervals. (and if you can do passable competitive backstroke, a little bit of stroke variation in training is nice.)

3

Thanks…what total distance would you train in one workout? I do some breast stroke as its the only other one that resembels anything

4

Back when I was still training regularly, I’d do a long straight swim roughly once per month kind of as a progress check and to give myself a ‘reminder’ taste of the pacing and mental focus (kinda depends on how often you’re racing, though; no point in doing more of it in training if you’re already doing it regularly in races). Other than that, you’ll definitely be better served to break it up into higher-intensity sets.

5

I think you are going to get a lot of answers here, everyone takes a different tack on workouts, indoor vs. open water training, etc. I swam distance, and certainly did swim 500 yd, 100 yd, mile, etc straight on occasion. That said, it is pretty boring, and not a great way to build strength, just endurance.

More typical would be 5 300’s, or 10 100’s. Some build speed, some build pace, some just make you cry like the 3 3,000’s day.

In your workouts, you should be splitting these up so you are addressing different strengths, and also it should be part of a total plan building towards your racing goals.

If you are just getting swims in whenever you can, here is a set I like that isn’t too boring, and easy to do without a clock. Called a ladder, or loco. What you are doing is building up to a distance, then dropping back down. Have a set rest inbetween sets, you can make it harder by reducing the rest. Start with something that you find difficult, swim till you can make it relatively easily, then drop it. For 1,500, it would look something like this (actually 1,550):

on :10 seconds rest:
25
50
100
200
400
400
200
100
50
25

Lastly, it sounds like you could use a structured workout. If you PM me, I can email you a free one that has swim workouts tailored for Oly distance

6

I’ll tell you what I do, but, I can’t recommend it for anyone else - but it does work for me.

Mostly during the winter; but, during racing season once in a while I’ll do a 1,650 for time (scy, would do lcm if I had a pool). I swim it as fast as I can. To keep me motivated, paced properly, and help w/lap counting I wear my trusty old Timex Ironman with the countdown set for my desired split @150yds. If you divided up 1,650 into 150’s that equals 11 times at or near the wall you’ll hear the beeper. It really makes a difference. Also, I hit the split button at 550, 1100 and finish (of course). For the 550’s I’m aiming to be even paced.

I’ll do this during the winter (which is the time I swim more) as often as twice a week, maybe even three times. Then, I’ll not do one for ~10 days to see if sprints, etc. have helped. Last year when I couln’t run for a few weeks and it was raining day after day (so, no bike or run) I even did a timed 1,650 in the AM and one in the late afternoon and my second one was faster and a near PR.

Last year I progressed from about 21:50 to 20:37 while still keeping my yardage down below 15k/wk. The nice thing about this is that I haven’t a concern at all about how “hard” to go during a OLY tri swim - I know that pace/feeling. Sure helps confidence too. Disclaimer, I’m “old” (50) and didn’t swim as a kid - other than playing in the lake kinda stuff.

You want fun? Try doing sprint 50s after a “hard” 1,650/1500m go ahead and give yourself lots of rest! You’ll wonder who’s arms are attached to you body. I’d suggest taking the next day off though :slight_smile:

OK - real swimmers can start (or stop) laughing now.

Best to all,
keith

7

1 line wonder…

8 x 1000 @ 1:20 base pace lcm

8

That sounds awful. Not quite as crazy as the legendary 30X1000 set from Erik Vendt

9

That was the mid distance squad. The dbags did 10 @ 1:15 pace

this was some random Sat AM workout, nothing special

10

It’s always that random sat workout where coaches drop those kinda sets. I was lucky and the worst I ever got was 3X1650 @ 17:30. still sucked something awful

11

I’ve heard of Vendt’s 30 X 1000 SCY set several times before but I’ve never heard what interval he did them on or what his best pace was for the workout. Do you have any info on this??? In any case, 30 X 1000 is an incredible workout!!! Last time I checked the record book, he still held the American Record for the 1000 at 8:36.

12

I heard him speak about it a couple years ago, so the details are kinda fuzzy, but I remember him saying he barely made it through the workout, and the middle couple were terrible. If I had to guess I would think the sendoff would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10:15-10:30. Not insanely fast, but it was a stupid long set.

13

So he was probably coming in at under 10:00 consistently, then leaving after 15-30 sec rest, for 30 X 1000 SCY. That’s about what I was guessing. I read an interview with him in Swimming World magazine a few years ago where he described this as his “favorite Saturday workout”!!!

14

Nice…

I remember at set of 150’s where the last 10 were on 1:45 lcm

15

You can do a straight 1650/1500 to mix it up, but if you want to improve, choose to do sets close to your average 100 time. In your example you do roughly 2m 100’s during a 1500m. So perhaps a good set would be 2 x (10 x100) - or variations of - on 2:05 with an assumption that you can swim the 100’s on 1:55. This should be hard to complete, and is similar to riding threshold on a bike. You should do kick everyday, perhaps 500 of a 3000 workout, and could be 5 x 100 with alternate 25 hard.

16

A 1500 meter swim is good sometimes just remember to take it slower and think of it as a endurance swim and not a all out effort. You should have some energy at the end.
For me, in swimming, cycling, and running racing is the combination of the speed, stamina and endurance that i built up prerace and the only time they are ever combined is in my one or two A races for the year.
Just remember the goal of a straight 1500 meter swim would be to build endurance. Keep your HR under control and focus on form not speed.

17

Seems like the set description gets passed along as : 30 x 1000 (short course yards) going 10 off 10:45, 10 off 10:30 and 10 off 10:15.

Doing a bit of digging around on the intrawebs using - Erik Vendt workout - as search terms also turns up:

“My freshman year at USC-and this isn’t crazy like 30X1,000’s…but what is? We did 3X100 IM’s and a 1000, three times. I got down to 8:58 on the last 1000 and I remember thinking “I can’t believe I just did that.” It was the first time I had ever done anything close to that fast in workout. Another bad one from when I was at Squids was 20X400’s…descend 1-20”

Also found another quote from him on the legendary 30x1000:

“It doesn’t seem that bad, but after about 15,000 and you realize you’re only half way it definitely gets hard. I was so dead after that set that I fell asleep in the gutter right afterwards. That’s why I enjoyed that set so much because it pushed me to my limits mentally and physically and beyond.”

Top Five hardest workouts list also has some goodies:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=280097322027667

The Larsen Jensen one was a Bill Rose ‘quality yardage set’ that was actually on something like 17:30 or 18:00 with Jensen having to hold a specified pace time (can’t remember just what, maybe 16:30 or something) until he reached failure or 15 completed. A few web site redesigns ago, Mission Viejo used to have an explanation of that one up- there were about 10 different swimmers attempting the set, all with different sendoff and required pace times, and at one point they had the 8& unders and 10& unders cheering them on.

18

Jill - Thanks for your informative post and link to the “5 Toughest Workouts Ever”. Jeff Kostoff’s 4 X 5000 yds SC on 50:00 is absolutely incredible, right up there with Vendt’s 30 X 1000. Going 50 100s in a row under 1:00 and repeating 4 times is truly phenomenal.

19

Wow, that Jeff Kostoff w/o brings back memories. He spoke to our tri club in like '90. We were all dumbfounded when we heard about his multiple 5k sets. On top of that he was a XC runner, and a good one I think. As memory serves, he seemed way too burned out to even think about triathlon. Seems like a waste of talent to me. But I’ve heard that burnout story in so many sports. Nothing for me to worry about; I’ve got talent for: Nothing!

20

i recall reading about him turning out for the XC team at Stanford because he said it was easier mentally to waste himself running since he wasn’t as good at it… whereas he was such a freak in the pool that it became too much of a mental grind to dial it up enough non-stop to get a decent burn physically, so the running was a way to break it up.