What is considered a fast/avg 100 yard swim? (Page 3)

I didn't mean create such havoc. I was only offering what I think is a reasonable goal for most triathletes in their 20's and 30's (particularly males, my regrets to the woman if that was unclear) I know I'd be put off if people were trying to tell me running sub-6 minute miles was a reasonable goal, but the swim times I'm suggesting are not anywhere near that challenging. I do not consider myself a gifted athlete. My best performances are a result of what I call my ability to tolerate high levels of discomfort for extended periods of time during training and competition.

If you enjoy your training and am happy with your race and the time, there is no need to pursue an agressive/fast swim time. In fact before I did triathlons I never worried about my time in an ocean or lake race. The goal was to try to win. The time was irrelevant. However, tracking your time in the pool and developing a race pace in the pool is invaluable.

I'm reletively new to this forum and I am just surprised to hear so many people voice their frustration with their swim times but then be so willing to set their goals to something they are "comfortable" with. One poster even started a thread expressing their frustration with their inability to improve their swimming time and then in another thread defended the use of iPods during their swim training. You just can't have it both ways. On the other hand if you train and participate in triathlons because you enjoy just doing it, fine. This just as valid as those that choose to train hard and compete. The sport is big enough for everyone.

I never swam in college but 15 years ago I swam Masters. And while you can lose your conditioning in any sport, once you have learned to swim faster, your body learns better stroke technique that it does not forget and you can rebuild your stroke and conditioning in a reasonable period of time. You do not start all over each season.

For the record: US masters top ten times in 2007 for 500 yards were

...................Men............................Woman

25-29........4:51 to 5:03................5:05 to 5:26
30-34........4:49 to 5:03................5:13 to 5:36
35-39........4:43 to 4:57................5:10 to 5:33
40-44........4:46 to 5:03................5:01 to 5:33
45-49........4:39 to 5:06................5:16 to 5:39
50-54........4:54 to 5:17................5:41 to 5:57
55-60........4:58 to 5:39................5:29 to 6:38



Edited by badnews 2008-02-08 5:07 PM

This user's post has been ignored.

I must be slow as hell then. LOL. I swam 400 meters in 8:45 last night, after running 6 miles.

When I referred to masters results I was referring to local meets, not national top 10 times. Unless you are swimming in large metro areas with a huge pool of x ncaa swimmers, I still say it's hard to find a lot of swimmers below 6:00.

Not to beat a dead horse but I never swam college.

Just a note. The fastest male Master in the 70 to 74 age group swam 500 yards in 5:57. He was 73. I would hope people who can compete in an Olympic, HIM or IM can at least aspire to beat a 73 year old.

[running2far - 2008-02-04 8:11 PM

If you go ave above 1:20 per 100 average in a race you'll be towards the front....1:10 and faster you'll be leading most races...(age group)]


[Those numbers seem really fast to me. I looked up the olympic results from 04 (Here) and the fastest swim time I could find was 17:49, which comes out to 1:11 (hope my math is right there)

I converted that to yards and that came to 1:04...

looking back I guess those numbers hold up better than I thought]

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American record (male) for 1650 yards is 14:26 set in 2001. It may be faster now but probably not by much.

That's about 52.5 seconds per hundred

And for 500 yards it is 4:08 which is about 49.6 seconds for each hundred yards set in 1995. Again it might be faster now.

Again this is swimming in a 25 yard poll with lane lines and a line on the bottom of the pool

Edited by badnews 2008-02-08 11:46 PM

nm.

Edited by LaurenSU02 2008-02-09 2:53 PM

I'm totally with rick on this one! what Badnews is talking about is totally irrelevant! Who cares what people strictly focusing on swimming can do in a pool, it has nothing to do with OWS by triathletes. And age doesn't have much relavance either, You think just becasue a 73y/o can swim a super fast time then someone in their 20's should be matching it??? give your head a shake! you can't compare a 73y/o who could've been swimming for 65 years to a 20y/o who's on his first season!

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Edited by AcesFull 2008-02-09 9:30 PM

I was away for the weekend and was glad the debate continued in my absence. So how did we get here? The question was what is a fast/ave 100yd swim? Various comments followed in the order (edited for brevity’s sake)

Well, first I would like to hope that we can agree that obsenities are inapproppriate in this forum. Or at least we should all aspire to it.

Second, I'm not sure how suggestion of 1:12 pool times are that radically different than the 1:20 times refered to previously by running2far and rstocks3. And frankly I don't understand the uproar about saying people should aspire to fast swim times. To awkwardly paraphrase a presidential candidate: nothing has been acheived that someone did not first aspire to acheive. Nevertheless, if rstokes3 who swam an 11:11 for 1000 yards (1:07 per hundred) last year in the 40-44 age group (in the pool), then it probably it is. I nevertheless encourage people to aspire to faster times.

My third comment is that the reason one might want to use pool times to assess progress is because pools for the most part produce consistant objective results around the country while open swims do not. Also most triathletes do most of their training in pools.

And then finally, When I race a tri as a 55 yr old I do ASPIRE to beat all 70 year olds to the finish. How do you think those 70 year olds got to be that fast. They aspired to beat all of us 50 year olds. I wouldn't want to let them down. As for fast 50 year olds, they aspire to beat all the 20, 30 and 40 year olds., and apparently that gentleman did.

And for those who are stuggling with their swimming or sense of humor, I offer this as an encouraging final note

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu6fVdAFGSI




Edited by badnews 2008-02-11 1:45 PM

500-YARD FREESTYLE 4:08.60—Peter Vanderkaay, Michigan, 3-23-2006. Thats fast! Average of 49seconds per 100 yards. Thats fast to me. Of course I am a swimmer first and a triathlete second.

If you swam over 5000 yards in an hour, you are smoking fast - and you did not even swim in high school? That means that A) you have tons of talent or B) spent years as a masters swimmer. Actually it probably means a combination of both.

A lot of people could spend years and years training and never reach those types of times. Many D1 swimmers would struggle to make that.

If you average 1:12 per 100 you are going to come out of the water in the top 1% of most triathlons. Just like if you run sub 6's or bike 25mph your going to be at the front of the pack in those disciplines.

Good swimmers can run sub 7 and bike faster than 22mph too. Similar to swimming, it just takes time and dedication.

Badnews, you don't seem to have a very good grasp on the nature of this sport. It's a TRI-athlon, you need to complete 3 sports with as much speed as possible. It is the very rare traithlete who can complete an Ironman distance swim in under 55min. and still finish at the top of their AG. I finsih at the top of my AG but do so because I can swim well, bike with the best, and hold a solid run. I would love to be able to swim IM races at a sub 1:20M/100 pace, but I never will. I can, however, beat the vast majority of those swimmers to the finish line. If a 70 year old beats me out of the watwer, I can assure you he will not beat me in the race and that's all that matters. In fact, I swam an average of 1:30/100 yards in Kona and still managed to finish 166th overall, so go figure.

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5:57 for 500 meters is 357 seconds for 10 times down and 10 times back. That is 357 seconds for 1/3 of a mile. That is RIDICULOUSLY fast and would equal an ironman swim of 2.4 miles in less than 44 minutes. You are on CRACK if you think that is normal.

Hehehehe ..... I just didn't invoke the drug influence.  I only called some ideas less-than-kind words .....

I absolutely agree with this, although regretfully I can not agree with everything byancd said about me.

I do appreciate the time you have all spent with me on this topic (let's not get all worked up about this, just trying to be a bit light hearted). But if you are going to jump all over someone relatively new to the forum at least don’t misrepresent that I have ever said that 1:12 is a reasonable time in the open water swim portion of a tri (I’d get you the relevant quotes but I’m a bit short on time).

The reason is, as I and others have said open water swims simply can not be compared to swim times in the pool, even though we do most of our training there, log our yardage and time there, and construct our work outs for that venue. In open water you have sighting, wind, waves, sometimes surf and currents, no wetsuit vs. $125 wetsuit vs. $500 wetsuits, as well as drafting (or inability to find a good set of feet) and different conditions getting out.

You can’t compare a 3 mile swim in a pool with a 3 mile no wetsuit Seal Beach swim. It is hard enough to compare swim times for the same race year to year (take a look at the Escape from Alcatraz swim times). A perfect illustration why pool and open water swim times can’t be compared is byancd’s description of his IM Kona swim. It says it all. As the TV coverage of the Kona IM clearly shows, the leaders are great swimmers, flying through the water even though their times are much slower than they would have been in a pool.

But let me digress. I did not do my first triathlon because I love to swim I did it because due to some health issues I gained 30 lbs and needed to lose it. I started to walk in the forest in the winter, which led over a number of months to jogging 7 miles in 2 hours over hilly trails often in the mud (actually better for a knee which had been challenging me). I ended losing 40 lbs and was so thrilled that I trained for a double century, insanely all on my Cyclops because of the bad weather. I didn’t plan on racing it but I got in a group that pushed me to my limit for most of the ride (I know drafting is frowned upon for cycling among tri athletes).

So one day I saw an advertisement for a triathlon. I always wanted to do one and I was in good running and cycling condition. Here in Oregon there is an early season sprint series that conducts the swim indoors. This one had a 750 meter swim I swam 5 workouts in the pool the couple of weeks before. I had not swum for years but it was not an issue for me. I had a blast. I was proudest of my cycling leg. I covered the short distance of 20k at just over 19 mph. Standard road bike, no aero bars or wheels.

Not that it matters, but the day before that race I found this website after frantically realizing I had no idea what I was suppose to do in the transitions. I found good advice so I came back. My only goal is to share my knowledge of swimming as someone shared theirs about transitions for me.

When I went on to do my first Olympic distance I picked up my running by training on a local track a few times. It really helped me develop a race pace even though the run portion of the tri was hilly. It was similar to learning your swim pace in the pool. I probably did 10 to 12 swim workouts for that one. What my swimming background did for me was that I loved the swim (no wetsuit) and came out of the water relaxed, excited and with lots of energy for the next leg. I didn’t care about my swim time because I knew my pace (learned that in the pool), and the actual time was irrelevant. I think being a better swimmer helps you not just swim faster but just as important. it makes you more efficient and expend less energy. To reach that goal you need to push yourself in the pool when you train.

The original topic of this thread had to do do with swim times (and not a philosophical discussion of the meaning of a triathletes life). So how does one set goals for swimming for your next tri and track your swimming progress?. Mmmmmmmm. Let me think. I’ll have to get back to you later on that one.