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For open water racing, establishing Pace Gears is the center piece of your distance training.
Articles in our Library on Pace Combinations:
Just as a cyclist can switch into different gears to change pace at different parts of the race, you too will develop ‘pace gears’ to switch between. The training you do in this plan is meant to help you establish certain gears that correspond to pace and energy demand which you can then use in a calculated way during your race. These pace gears allow you to protect your limited energy and achieve a higher average speed for the race. They give you the ability to adapt to different water and competitor conditions which may urge you to change pace at a particular moment.
To start, your first reference point is Rate of Perceived Effort:
Rate Of Perceived Effort (RPE) is your internal, subjective sense of how quickly you are burning up fuel. With this sense in place, you can monitor your energy expense and find the more economical pace for your event and conditions.
You will establish five Pace Gears (G1, G2, G3, G4, and G5) that correspond to these RPE levels.
Each pace gear will have an approximate SPL x Tempo combination that set your pace and effort.
In the pool, you will use Strokes Per Length (SPL) and Tempo (seconds per stroke) units. Just count strokes to the wall, and time those strokes to the BEEP of the Tempo Trainer.
In open water, you need to train with two fixed points and estimate stroke count between those two points (just as if you were going to swim in a pool of that length) based on stroke length. If you know your SPL in the pool, and you know the distance of your can help you calculate SPL for your unique open water route.
Example Calculations
Let’s show an example of how to set up these pace gears.
Ricardo has a comfortable SPL of 18 when he is swimming at ‘walk’ pace in his 25m local pool. Based on his height (or wingspan) of 1.75m and a few assumptions, 18 SPL translates into a stroke length (SL) of 1.11 meters per stroke. And his tempo at that walk pace is about 1.40.
So, we can say that Ricardo has a G1 at 18 SPL x 1.40 sec Tempo.
When Ricardo goes to the sea to practice, he has two fixed points that are 175 meters apart. He will translate his pool metrics to this open water setting so that 18 SPL in a 25m pool equal about 157 SPL in 175 meters. So, when Ricardo wants to swim at ‘walk’ pace in open water he can set his TT to 1.40 and then count stroke between those two fixed points to see if he is staying on the pace he has intended. If he takes more strokes than 157 then that means he has allowed his stroke to shorten a bit, and if he takes less than 157 strokes then that means he has lengthened his stroke more than intended, perhaps working too hard.
Furthermore, in the pool where measurement is easiest, Ricardo has worked out some combinations for the other 4 gears:
- Gear 1: 18 x 1.40 (walk)
- Gear 2: 18 x 1.34 (jog)
- Gear 3: 19 x 1.25 (cruise)
- Gear 4: 19 x 1.19 (run)
- Gear 5: 20 x 1.10 (sprint)
Ricardo will use these settings in his pool practice in order to deeply imprint the feel of both the stroke length and the tempo together so that when he is in open water, without walls and without a TT, he can reproduce these gears by muscle memory.
But, over the course of his training, the SPL x Tempo settings for those gears may adjust – particularly, we expect to see Ricardo’s SPL stay fixed, but his Tempo increase a bit for each gear.
Calculating Your Own Gears
If you do not already have some ideas of where your SPL and your Tempo should be set for these gears, don’t worry. This is a big part of what this training plan and our discussion is meant to help you with.
If you are practicing mostly in the pool, getting numbers for your SPL, your Tempo and then evaluating your RPE with different combinations will be fairly easy to do. The fixed dimensions and conditions of the pool make it easy to measure.
If you are practicing mostly in the open water, you have to set up a system that will hold you accountable to certain objective achievements in skill. If you can measure it you can be sure it is getting better or not. So, this is why I urge you to find one or more placed in your open water area that have two (or more) fixed points, or a fixed route where you can measure the distance between those points (with GPS or Google Map).
The first step is getting a sense of your Walk-Jog-Cruise-Run-Sprint RPE paces. Practice switching between them, as if you were clicking gears on the bicycle or shifting gears in the car. You are tuning your sense of effort first.
The second step is to use a Tempo Trainer to experiment and associate a certain tempo with each one of those RPE settings. You will have a certain range of tempos that cover these gears right now, as you start, but the Tempo Practices in this plan will gradually shift that range toward faster tempos.
The third step is to then do stroke counting at each RPE setting to see what SPL is associated with each gear right now. Yet, the practices in this plan may shift your SPL over the following weeks.
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