Weekend Swim Workout: Ultra Short Race-Pace Training

A hot topic in the swimming world continues to be something called “Ultra Short Race-Pace Training” (USRPT), which centers around making your training highly specific to your race goals. For this workout, calculate the 100 pace for your goal swim split (e.g., a 60-minute swim for a 2.4-mile Ironman swim is ~1:25 per 100 pace).

A

300 choice swim
6 x 50 at 1:10 (25 kick/25 drill)
3 x 200 at 3:00 (50 build/50 easy/repeat)
Ultra Short Race-Pace Training: 25 x 100 at “pace” + :15 (swim at goal pace; if you swim :05 or slower than pace, skip the next 100, rest, and resume)
4 x 150 pull at 2:20 (all easy)
200 choice cool-down

Total: 4500

B

300 choice swim
5 x 50 at 1:30 (25 kick/25 drill)
3 x 150 at 3:00 (50 easy/50 build/50 easy)
Ultra Short Race-Pace Training: 20 x 100 at “pace” + :20 (swim at goal pace; if you swim :05 or slower than pace, skip the next 100)
4 x 100 pull at 2:15 (all easy)
100 choice cool-down

Total: 3500

C

200 choice swim
4 x 50 with :20 rest (25 kick/25 drill)
3 x 100 with :20 rest (50 easy/50 build)
Ultra Short Race-Pace Training: 15 x 100 at “pace” + :20 (swim at goal pace; if you swim :05 or slower than your pace, skip the next 100)
3 x 100 pull with :15 rest (all easy)
100 choice cool down

Total: 2600