Swim T-Pace

Saturday I did my first ever T-pace swim. These are conducted about every 4-6 weeks in order to track progress. T-pace is your threshold pace or the pace that you want to maintain during your workouts. For swimming, the pace is a way to judge intensity. Your workouts are structured to revolve around your t-pace (ex. 4x200 at t-pace + 10s).

The process for conducting a t-pace is simple. A solid warmup and then an all out 1000y time trial. You take the 1000y time and divide it by 10 to determine your pace per 100y. In the pool I typically swim between 1.35-1.45 for the shorter distance intervals and drift between 1.45-1.50 on the longer sets as my form breaks down. Ideally, I think I want my t-pace to be around 1.35-1.40. Hopefully this is where Masters classes will help me.

I have also began tracking my swim times in a spreadsheet. Since swimming is the most constant of the disciplines (terrain doesn't change), I can analyze my swims from session to sessions. I also added a workout that I did back in May during my peak phase of IM CDA so that I can look at long term progress. For blogging purposes, I am just going to focus on my T-pace.

1/21 1000y TT 18.01 T-Pace 1.48/100

That's about on par with where I thought it would be. I have less than 10 swim workouts under my belt this season and swimming a continuous 1000y was the longest interval I have done thus far. This should give a solid benchmark for improvement.

Now on to my LT run this afternoon....