Technique

Race pace in one minute

"RP" means race pace: the speed you want to hold in a race. A race-pace set breaks the race into short repeats so you can practise that exact speed, with a little rest in between. The rest and stopping rules below come from Brent Rushall's Ultra-short Race-pace Training (USRPT) (see further reading).

Your race-pace time for each repeat

Take your goal time for the race and divide it by the number of repeats that make up the race. For example:

  • 50s at 200 pace: goal 200 time ÷ 4. A 2:40 goal means 40.0 per 50.
  • 25s at 200 pace: goal 200 time ÷ 8. A 2:08 goal means 16.0 per 25.
Race Usual repeats Each repeat Rest
50 25s, timed as fast as you can close to full recovery (see below)
100 25s goal ÷ 4 about 15 seconds
200 50s (or 25s) goal ÷ 4 (or ÷ 8) about 20 seconds (15 after 25s)
400 50s or 100s goal ÷ 8, or goal ÷ 4 about 20 seconds
800 100s goal ÷ 8 about 20 seconds
1500 100s goal ÷ 15 about 20 seconds

Rest

  • Short and fixed: about 15 seconds after each 25 and about 20 seconds after each 50 or longer repeat, for every race from the 100 to the 1500. Don't lengthen it: longer rests after short swims let too much recovery happen, and the set stops training the end of your race (USRPT defined, bulletin 49).
  • Round to the pace clock: your send-off is the repeat time plus the rest, rounded to the nearest 5 seconds so it's easy to read. For a 32-second 50 plus 20 seconds' rest (52 s), leave on 50 for a harder set or on 55 to manage more repeats (Rest-interval selection, bulletin 52).
  • Example: 30 x 25 at 100 race pace on 15 seconds' rest (Ultra-short race-pace training, bulletin 40).

How many repeats

Not a fixed number: swim as many repeats on your target time as you can. A repeat slower than the target is a miss. Stop the set at the second miss in a row, or the third miss in all. Write down how many you made before the first miss, and try to beat it next time (bulletin 49).

Training for a 50

The 50 is the exception (Sprint-USRPT: training for 50-m races, bulletin 56):

  • Swim 25s as fast as you can and time every one: from a dive when the pool allows it, otherwise from a push.
  • Rest until you're close to fully recovered: far longer than the 15–20 seconds above. For 15 m from a dive, that's up to about 4 minutes.
  • Stop when two repeats in a row are more than 0.2 seconds slower than your best of the set.

Your steady training pace

The workout builder asks for your steady freestyle pace per 100. One way to find it:

  1. After a good warm-up, swim a 400 as fast as you can hold evenly. Note the time.
  2. Rest 5–10 minutes with easy swimming, then swim a 200 the same way.
  3. Your pace per 100 = (400 time − 200 time) ÷ 2. For example, 6:30 and 3:10 give (390 − 190) ÷ 2 = 100 seconds, or 1:40 per 100.

That's roughly the pace you could hold for a 1500. Use it in the workout builder; for a race-pace set, give the builder your goal time too.

Further reading: Brent Rushall's race-pace bulletins

Brent Rushall's Swimming Science Bulletins (San Diego State University), numbers 40–56. All PDFs.

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Technique and debate