I’m considering going to Sprint Nationals next year, and would like to be in a position to not embarrass myself.
For now, my swimming certainly gets in the way of that. I do plan on joining a masters swim group over the winter, and actually making the effort to HTFU.
I’m also looking at tracking my training progress with a couple of different benchmarks. Thinking about taking some subset of:
Pool – 50,100,200,400,800 (SCY)
Open Water (calm) – 400,800,1600 (M)
Curious which benchmarks are most suitable for an 800m Sprint triathlon, and what some ideas of what respectable times in training would be.
Here are some examples of very respectable times:
-Qualification for Canadian olympic/world trials (aka Canadian national champs): 8:27SCM for 800m (1:03.3/100m)
-Typical fastest swimmer in my area: 1:15/100m in open water for 750-800m. I’m assuming sprint nationals will be faster, though it’s very hard to compare from course to course. Given that I can do 3:30 for a 3x300SCM set and these guys clean my clock, I’d guess that their 3x300SCM time on 6:00 would be in the 3:15-3:20 range (faster if they trained in their wetsuit). The best guys on my swim teams could typically do 3:00-3:05 in a speedo from a push for a 3x300SCM set on 6:00.
Tips:
-Competitive swimming times will seem faster for two reasons: the swimmers are doing flip turns at each end, and the swimmers are going all out for just that distance. Add some amount of time for triathlon race pace, and if you’re not doing flip turns, add 5-10 seconds per 100m.
-To haphazardly convert SCM to SCY, subtract 10% from the times. 8:27SCM → 7:36SCY. It’s not pretty and it’s not entirely correct, but it is close enough.
USA Swimming puts out regular time standards charts for their junior age groupers. If you’re under 50 or so, and willing to put in a specialized swim training block where you’re doing 20-25K a week for about 3 months, the B time standards are usually a reasonable goal
For practices, 10x100 on a fixed interval getting at least 5 seconds of rest after every rep is a useful test set.
Not to hijack but I think this would be helpful for OP as well. I have a goal this year to drop my 800m swim to 13 minutes for instance or 1:35 pace. Not very fast.
Anyway, what would be a good 10x100 test set to tell a swimmer they are ready for a given 800m pace. For instance, given a goal of X/100m what 10x100 interval would tell that swimmer they are ready for the X pace in an 800 meter swim?
For example, say the goal pace is 1:35 / 100 meters. What should I be holding and sending off in a set?
USA Swimming puts out regular time standards charts for their junior age groupers. If you’re under 50 or so, and willing to put in a specialized swim training block where you’re doing 20-25K a week for about 3 months, the B time standards are usually a reasonable goal
I’ll be honest though, I’m not sure I can fully wrap my mind around 20-25K/week swimming. Though I would like to do a 2-month block of around 15K.
For next season I would like to consistently do 8-9K/wk of swimming (versus the 1.5-3K I do now). I’m looking at joining up with a masters swim group in a couple of weeks, and hopefully having a structured group to train with will help me get in the pool time (and quality) I need.
