A few tidbits:
They have worked hard to improve Ledecky’s pull and not slide into a right side catch-up when she gets tired. The emphasis over the past year has been reducing kicking save for the last 50 or so.
"In the roll of a wave of workouts he puts up on the board, Gemmell notes that Saturday is over-distance day. The mind may conjure up thoughts of 8x800s or 6x1000s, he says but the sets are more likely to be a series of 500 swims on a set time at a set pace, ascending, descending. “It will be something to keep her going but that isn’t going to kill her.”
You fail in practice in order to learn how to avoid failure on race day- “Katie fails in the practice environment more than anyone in the group: sometimes she fails spectacularly.” She has a system of self-assessment in training: A, B or F. There’s either great or good – or failure, with nothing in between.”
Focusing on getting full stroke freestyle perfectly as for drills, here’s lanemate Andrew Gemmell (US open water national team guy) “if you consider 10x100s a drill, we do lots of drills”.