November 21   I swam a third 2500-yard, single-set practice today. In the past week I had done two versions of 5 x 500, working from 500 down to 10 x 50 on one, and going in the opposite direction on the other. You can read my notes on the former here and and on the latter here.

To allow easy comparison of my practices, I decided to keep my practice distance the same at 2500, but to keep my repeats at the low end of my range and to do a pyramid set. A pyramid is where the second half mirrors what you do in the first half in reverse, usually beginning with a short swim, progressing to a long one, then returning to short. A typical example is
100 – 200 – 300 – 400 – 500 – 400 -300 – 200 – 100.
I did exactly this, but breaking each into 4 repeats.
I swam (with pace per 100/500 in parentheses after each set)
4 x 25 on :30 (1:24/7:00)
4 x 50 on :55 (1:24/7:00)
4 x 75 on 1:15 (1:24/7:00)
4 x 100 on 1:40 (1:23/6:55)
4 x 125 on 2:00 (1:22/6:50)
4 x 100 on 1:40 (1:20/6:40)
4 x 75 on 1:15 (1:20/6:40)
4 x 50 on :55 (1:18/6:30)
4 x 25 on :30 (1:17/6:25)

As with the two sets of 5 x 500, I held 14SPL (actually slightly lower than 14 as the first length of each repeat was 13SPL), maintained a breathing frequency of every 3 strokes, and minimized my kick, both on pushoff and while swimming.

A few words on minimizing kick. Rather than holding my legs together, I focused on keeping each leg streamlined, and let any impetus to kick come purely from body rotation. Even without "trying," my legs did an effortless, but still helpful, 2-Beat Kick simply from the dynamic of hip rotation. My emphasis on streamlining indeed seemed to accentuate that natural reaction.

My goal on the set was to maintain a constant pace, with no increase in effort, as the repeat distance increased on the first half of the set. For instance, to maintain the same pace on 100 yard repeats as I had on 25-, 50- and 75-yard repeats I had to concentrate on hitting every turn well and making every one of my 14 strokes each length count. Soft hands, high elbow and light-pressure forearms helped me find enough speed while saving energy. As you can see my pace improved on the 100s and 125s, then that improvement accelerated as I returned to shorter repeats again.

After having maintained a 14SPL for 5 lengths (on the 125s) it seemed a bit easier to maintain it for only 100 yards and consequently my stroke gained slightly in dynamism each time the repeat distance dropped – though I didn’t feel I put out any more effort.

My pace per 500 for this 2500-yard set of shorter repeats was 6:47 or 1.23 yds/sec an improvement in pace of 1.6 percent over my last practice. Even better I swam slightly faster with a few less strokes overall, more consistency in breathing every 3 strokes and more ease overall.