For the past several months I have adapted each main set to the Tempo Trainer -I also email the results of that to the coach after our practice and he is starting to see that being able to measure what you are doing is a huge improvement over mainly guessing.

 Our group is divided into five lanes from slowest or most beginning swimmers to the fastest swimmers.  I swim in the fourth lane and am consistently improving but not yet ready to move on to the fifth lane.  

Recently we were asked to swim 10 x 100 descending. Our goal was to take it from 60% to 85% effort.  I know that if I swim at a 1:27 setting on my Tempo Trainer I hear 80 beeps per 100 (a stroke count of 15 plus pushoff and turnaround time). This translates to roughly 1 minute 42 for the 100 -this also would be the equivalent of 60% effort for me.  My goal then was to adjust the TT by 1/100th of a second per 100 yard set. (1:27, 1:26, 1:25 …. 1:18) . My secondary goal was to maintain my stroke count or in this case hold to 80 beeps per 100 yards.  By my calculations beforehand that would mean that my time at the end should be 1 minute 34 seconds.  

There is a gentleman that swims regularly in this group as well.  He alternates between lane 3,  lane 4 and lane 5 without ever settling on one lane.  He definitely is a faster swimmer than I am if we do short repeats.  However, he has no idea on what pacing means in terms of his own swimming.  On this particular day he swam this set in my lane.  He told me that he was not very good at pacing, but knowing that he is generally a faster swimmer than I am,  he took off 5 seconds before me.  The first 100 he came in faster than I did.  The second 100 we were pretty evenly matched.  It only took one more 100 before he was winded and asked me to be in the lead.  I consistently came in ahead of his time and by the tenth set he was more than a full length behind me.  

My result:  I started out at 1 minute 42 seconds and did indeed end up at 1 minute 34 seconds.  I achieved the goal of the descending set and never had to worry about whether I was pacing myself or not.  My only thought during each swim was that I wanted to stay right at 80 beeps per 100. 

His result:  Because he did not have a way to measure what 60% effort meant versus 85%, he started out at probably 85% and ended up at 100% which was so exhausting that he was slower each and every 100 yards.

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