30x50 Swim Workout

I had a post last month about mixing up my swim workouts, and I noted that I might do a workout of 50s shortly. Well I did. It was my first swim like that AT LEAST since leaving the pool when the pandemic started (March 2020), and I don't think I've done this swim for about 5 years.

I first talked about a 50x50 workout years ago, and here's what I had posted about it:

Main Set: 50x50 (aka 10 rounds of 5x50) All on 50” or 10” rest (50” is lowest interval, take 10” if you’re touching the wall past 45”), then 30 secs rest between sets of 5.

• #1: Easy
• #2: Breathe every 3rd stroke
• #3: 25 fast/25 easy
• #4: Breathe every 5th stroke
• #5: FAST!

It says to start every 0:50 OR to take 0:10 rest. Being most of my 50s (except my all out FAST 50s) are in the mid-0:40s, I just opt for the full 0:10 rest. So that's what I did.

My first set reminded me HOW HARD it is to swim moderately while breathing every 5th stroke - I ran out of air on that 4th rep!! And then I was expected to do an "all out" 50 another 10 seconds later? Nasty.

I took my splits every 50 (so I could keep an eye on my short 0:10 rest), and here are my splits. They show the "moderate" sets of 50 for the first 4, and then the 5th "fast" 50 ended each set:

41, 44, 44, 45, 39.8
46, 44, 44, 45, 39.6
46, 45, 46, 46, 39.6
47, 45, 45, 45, 38.9
48, 44, 47, 46, 39.4
47, 45, 45, 47, 39.1

Ave fast 50: 0:39.4

I didn't look back before the workout to my splits in the past, and I'm glad I didn't. I was happy to be keeping these under 0:40 for the "all out" 50s, but in Feb of 2018, I averaged 0:36.8/50, and then in April of 2018, I averaged just over 0:37/50. So I have some work to do if I'm interested in getting back that speed. (And I'm not interested in swimming like I used to - I'm feeling OK swimming just once/week, and I can't expect to get faster doing that.)

This was my first workout of 50s with my Garmin, but it showed me no surprises in the pace graph:

I circled some things in that graph below: the "25 fast/25 easy" in the middle of each set are easy to see (in RED), most of my final "all out" 50s were faster on the way back (in PURPLE) but my final 2 "all out" 50s were more evenly split (in GREEN) by having a faster first half than my first 4 "all out" 50s:

If I keep swimming all summer, I'll have to try this again in 6 weeks or so. Brutal. But oddly fun.