One of the smartest replies to this post is that the relationship changes depending on how good a swimmer you are. So the correlation that the top swimmers here have between pool and race are not relevant to you.
You’re at about my level. I run about 9m30 for 500 metres (not yards) in the pool at a comfortable race effort. I’ll give you a basic run down of my comparable times in my short career.
- Started swimming in April 2005. Did 1h32 in the pool and did 1h19 at Nice IM. Wetsuit/Salt Water
- Improved to about 1h20 in the pool and did 1h11 at Nice in 2006
- Upped the training a bit and did 1h10 at IMUK in Fresh Water
Now I’ve realy upped the training and I can do 1h12 in the pool and I’m targeting 1h5 at Nice this year.
I calculated that the percentage difference in my pool versus race times change as follows in these 3 examples. 16%, 12.5%, 11.5% and my projection for this year is a 10% difference. This supports the contention that the better swimmer you become, the less you are helped by the wet suit.
I think you should be shooting for 1Hr10 in a fresh water IM based on your pool splits.