Two words: water polo. If you could make it through Friday Morning Water Polo at my old swim club (only rule: you had to let the other player come up for air if they let go of the ball) then there is absolutely nothing that another human being could do that would be rougher than that.
Oddly, I miss my old swim clubs and former teams. Many great memories there.
When I turned 26 years old, about 21 years ago, I began doing a birthday set of 100"s(meters) on the 1:15. The last time I did the set was pulling, and I did 46 of them on the 1:15, and I haven’t missed a year since. Last year my heart stopped,(not during the swim) and now I have a pacemaker, but I plan to do the 48 of them this Feburary. I usually have a few others do it with me, including Simon Lessing, Wolfgang Deitrich, Rob Mackle, and others. So it is not such an impossible task for people who have swam all their lives, especially if your friend is talking about yards. At that distance 1:20’s is attainable for just about anyone who wants it and trains for it. Good luck…Bionic Monty
Just boggles my mind. 48 on 1:15. Somebody else up there in the thread one hundred one hundreds in 1.
Can we lock this thread so I don’t have to keep reading from you dolphins out there. Very disheartening. I’m having a bad day. I was thinking of this thread and went out to the pool, and did 2 in one fifteen. Regained my composure by acting like something was wrong with my goggles, took a few minutes, and went back into my “swim the English Channel” routine.
I’m going to work up to five by december, and maybe when the snow thaws, 6, but first things first, I need to add a fashionable “hand wap.” And a flip turn foot “wap.” All the fast swimmers, for some reason, I watch, “wap,” the water with their hands and on the flip turns. “Wap…Wap…Wap…”
It’s probably a macho, dominance thing. Because it’s not in the books.
It’s a relatively easy set for a competitive swimmer.
Back in the day, I’d get bored long before I got tired though.
1:20 for 100 yards is 1:26 for 100 meters. I’m pretty sure everyone who can swim sub 58:00 in an IM can do that.
I say you should decrease the # of intervals, but the low rest is important.
Booth, you said earlier that you’d only been swimming for 0.75 years! Of course you think that workout is crazy 
If you stick with it, I guarantee that in a couple of years you’ll have no trouble doing that workout yourself.
Don’t worry about doing 2, or doing 3 on 1:15. Stick to longer swims and work on your technique. Your time will come down as you get more ‘feel’ for the water.
BTW, don’t add any "wap"s to your swimming!
Like others have said, it all depends on what you’re used to. That interval isn’t that insane if you’ve been swimming for quite sometime.
In college, we always had a winter workout that involved 100 x 100s - the century club! Some of those 100s were warmup and some cooldown. But there was a huge section in the middle that I did on 1:20 - some folks faster around 1:15, some slower at 1:25.
When I was a teenage swimmer our coach pushed us along pretty hard from time. I often did 100x100 metres on a 1.30 sendoff and on one memorable occassion 45x200 meters (LC ) on a 2.45 sendoff, avg 2.27, last one 2.16.
At the time we had some real die-hards swimfreaks that made the rest of us feel inferior no matter how far or hard we swam. IM-swimmer Jan Bidrman (4.12 for 400 IM SC) was reported doing 100x200 IM longcourse. Incidentally, his shoulder was injured at the time (I wonder why, DUH´) so he kicked the whole set!!
The worst thing I heard about though and the most impressive endurancefeat EVER accomplished in my book was when Anders Forvass broke the ´WR in 24 hr swimming. The guy swam 107000 meters SC! That´s a 1.21/100 average for 24 hr straight!! How insane is that? Can you imagine going forth and back in a pool for 24 hrs? The weirdest part about this is the the guy actually bounced back from this and won the Swedish national champs in the 200 fly. I imagine that guy would have been a decent IM-athlete…
1:20 for 100 yards is 1:26 for 100 meters. I’m pretty sure everyone who can swim sub 58:00 in an IM can do that.
My best set ever for 100s was 20 on 2:00 sendoffs, and I nearly died. But, I easily swam 1:00 in an IM, and 27:10 in a half. Are fast 100s really the key to a decent IM swim?
A slight exagerration on my part, Forvass swam 101900 (according to Guiness), that makes a 1.24.7 average. Still pretty good!
The worst of the Coach’s birthday sorts of sets I’ve heard of:
http://mvnswim.org/news/HolyCowWhataWorkout.htm
"Saturday, June 7th at 7:00am, six brave swimmers embarked on what could only be called a “Holy Cow!” workout challenge. The workout was Coach Rose’s brainchild designed to give the swimmers “bragging rights” that they are willing to do “stuff” that others would not even attempt. According to Rose, it was intended not so much for conditioning, but for mental toughness and self image.
What was this workout? A Herculean set requiring each swimmer to swim as many 1500’s on 20:00 as possible up to a maximum of 20. Each swimmer was further given a personalized “ceiling” time that each repeat could not exceed. The ceiling was based on the swimmer’s best 1500 meter time, plus a reasonable percentage. The purpose for the ceiling was to ensure the swimmers continued the set only as long as they could control their pace, thereby mitigating potential injury. "
One of the swimmers who did the set was Larsen Jensen, American record holder and World Championships silver medalist in the 800 IM.
In high school (Gov. Mifflin, Shillington, PA) on New Year’s Eve we did a set to match the incomng year. Luckily I graduated in 1988. So that was 88 x 100. This year they will do 200 X 100.
That makes for sore shoulders.