Thanks to both my Dad (who is still racing in his 70s) and my coaches growing up, I built the habit of maintaining training logs from an early age. Historically, those were in notebooks, but for almost a decade starting in late 2008, I maintained a swimming training blog on the US Masters Swimming website. For a long time, there was a vibrant, online community where swimmers shared ideas on training and racing, with each of us picking up pointers for drills, sets, and entire workouts. It was a great, if a bit obsessive (yours truly included), and supportive group. The community still exists, but, after USMS de-emphasized their focus on this part of their member offering, the community dwindled significantly and I fell out of the habit.
As I'm getting motivated to race again next spring, I figured this was as good as any a place to re-start my training log. Though our 'Training Table' at the University of Texas referred to our athletes' dining hall, this seemed a relevant enough name for this portion of 1001 Pools.
I've been back in the water with more focus for a couple of weeks now, so this morning was time to set my 'base pace,' the interval I will use for repeat 100 freestyles. Ever since I read Dave Salo's excellent Complete Conditioning for Swimming,I have been using his recommended 3 x 300 test to figure this out. The set is done as follows:
The goal is to swim hard, but to be as close to even splitting within each 300 and across the set of 300s.
After the first one, you set your interval to give yourself 45 to 60 seconds rest. Historically, I have used a 4:00 interval in short course yards and 4:30 in short course metres.
Your Threshold Pace is simply your average 100 time across the set.
I then create my 'Base Pace' by adding 5-10 seconds to my Threshold and use my Base Pace as my primary training interval.
This might make more sense below.
I swam today at the exceptional Valley of the Sun JCC pool, diving in a little after 6am.
Standard Warmup (1,500 yards)
I generally do either this exact warmup or a very close variant to it for most workouts. This allows me to assess how I'm feeling and how my times are from day to day.
1 x 400: IM, kick-drill by 25s
4 x 100: on 1:30, freestyle swim, descend wearing a Finis snorkel
1:12, 1:11, 1:08, 1:04
4 x 100: on 1:50, IM kick, descend, odds w/board on stomach, evens on back no board
1:32, 1:29, 1:29+, 1:25
0:31 (fly), 0:33 (back), 0:39 (breast), 0:30 (free)
3 x 300 Test Set (1,000 set / 2,500 yards total)
1 x 50: easy breaststroke kick w/snorkel
3 x 300: test set on 4:00
My best performance ever on this was back in December of 2016, when I went 3:08+, 3:09, 3:08+
Today I was 3:25, 3:22+, 3:19+
This puts my Threshold pace at roughly 1:07.5
I will set my Base Pace at 1:15
1 x 50: easy breaststroke kick w/snorkel
TOTAL: 2,500 yards